Uncovering new insights into pulmonary vasculature

  • Deep characterization of the pulmonary vasculature from chest CT

  • Precise quantification of the arterial and venous volumes

  • Differentiating between vascular disease types

  • Non-invasive assessment method with high precision and accuracy

Pulmonary artery-vein phenotyping with artificial intelligence

LungQ™ AVX - image analysis software for artery-vein phenotyping is the most recent addition to the vascular suite of Thirona's AI-based lung quantification platform, LungQ. Conducting automated analysis of thoracic CT scans with artificial intelligence, AVX can accurately quantify vessel diameters and vessel volumes down to the subvoxel range. The analysis allows to precisely capture changes in the vascular volume shift throughout the entire vascular tree, uncovering entirely new insights into human pulmonary vasculature.

The precisely quantified volume of the patient's pulmonary arteries and veins can facilitate accurate phenotyping, serve as diagnostic support, and help to measure treatment efficacy. Providing quantitative characterization of the pulmonary vessels on a detailed level, AVX can help discover a variety of new insights into underlying disease mechanisms and treatment response.

Offering a non-invasive distinction between pulmonary arteries and veins, AVX opens the possibility of searching for new dependencies between various factors and symptoms enabling development of new therapies for vascular-related pulmonary diseases, such as pulmonary (arterial) hypertension, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, cystic fibrosis, and many more.

Use case examples

Enabling novel approach to treatment of pulmonary hypertension​

Although PH has no cure, there are various promising treatment options available nowadays. Choosing the right treatment path in the early stage of the disease is crucial to delay or prevent its progression. Studies show that LungQ™ AVX not only can detect PH, but also identify its different subtypes. With the ability to analyze even the subtle changes in the vasculature over time, the automatic AV phenotyping can aid in development of new therapies, in a multitude of applications, such as for example:

Non-invasive differentiation between PAH and other PH groups​

Assessment of operable versus ​non-operable regions in CTEPH​

Evaluation of treatment follow up and drug efficacy

Discovering new therapeutic targets related to pulmonary vascular abnormalities​

Many lung diseases, like for example COPD or cystic fibrosis, are associated with vascular abnormalities, but the extent of these vascular components and their details are often poorly understood. AVX phenotyping opens up an access to earlier unknown insights, enabling exploration of new therapies and better understanding of these diseases. For example:

Identifying signs of pulmonary hypertension in IPF patients

Enabling vascular disease phenotyping in COPD patients

Evaluation of treatment follow up and drug efficacy

The most recent study results​

    • AI-based quantification of pulmonary vascular changes aftr baloon pulmonaryh angioplasty: "The BP-AI study" | Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute Annual Congress
    • Prevalence of Pulmonary Vascular Abnormalities in Smokers With and Without COPD | May 2024 | American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine
    • Higher pulmonary artery and vein volumes are associated with disease severity and mortality in smokers with and without COPD | Oct 2023 | European Respiratory Journal
    • CT-quantified pulmonary artery volume associates independently with higher mortality in smokers with and without COPD | Oct 2023 | European Respiratory Journal
    • Longitudinal changes in CT quantified pulmonary artery volume and interstitial abnormalities correlate with pulmonary function decline in IPF patients | Oct 2023 | European Respiratory Journal

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