PlaqAI

We are happy to announce that we were awarded a seeding grant from the EWUU Alliance as part of the AI for Health Call for Projects. Our project entitled PlaqAI aims to generate pilot data through artificial intelligence (AI) for deep-phenotyping of atherosclerotic plaques and the discovery of novel biomarkers for patient stratification.

PlaqAI aims to improve and refine the phenotyping of atherosclerotic lesions through a data driven and agnostic approach. The project has the ambition to achieve higher success rates in disease-associated biomarker discovery which could be used for preventive healthcare, or in the setting of drug targeting as surrogate markers of efficacy.

The project integrates different ‘omics’-datasets from the Athero-Express Biobank Study with the knowledge and expertise on atherosclerotic genetics (Sander van der Laan, UMC Utrecht), image-based analyses (Mitko Veta, TU/e) and AI (Alejandro Lopez Rincon, UU). We aim to combine both plaque-derived transcriptomics with whole-slide images from histological slides in one CNN - making PlaqAI high-risk, high-reward.

When successful, PlaqAI will generate pilot data to use in future national (ZonMW, NWO) and international (Horizon, IHI, Pathfinder) grant applications.

PlaqAI is complementary to another grant we recently received through the Health Holland TKI application round.