How AI-Driven Cardiac Scans Can Help Doctors Diagnose Heart Disease

Traditional heart scans miss the most dangerous form of arterial plaque, but breakthrough AI technology is giving doctors a powerful weapon against a common killer

Sari Harrar,

AARP

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Published September 30, 2025

Glenn Harvey

Damini Dey loves biking the roller-coaster mountain trails around Los Angeles. But in the spring of 2024, she had chest pains and shortness of breath on steep climbs.

“It was a little worrisome,” says Dey, an AI-based software developer.

Her cardiologist recommended cardiac computed tomography angiography (CCTA) — a scan that uses X-rays to look inside the heart for plaque and narrowed arteries.

The scan found calcified plaque in blood vessels in Dey’s heart, a common indicator of emerging atherosclerosis.

But when Dey, director of the quantitative image analysis program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, rechecked her imaging using AI-enabled software developed in her lab, she found deposits of heart-threatening noncalcified plaque.

This dangerous gunk gets overlooked by most conventional readings of CCTA scans because it lacks a bright, easy-to-see shell of calcium, says Daniel Berman, M.D., director of cardiac imaging at Cedars-Sinai. That’s a problem, because noncalcified plaque often contains inflamed fat, which is prone to rupturing and triggering blood clots that can cause a heart attack, he says.

The results of the AI scan led Dey’s cardiologist to prescribe a cholesterol-lowering statin.

“With the plaque analysis enabled by AI, we were better able to treat her disease,” says Cedars-Sinai cardiologist Ronit Zadikany, M.D. The data also motivated Dey to eat healthier, she says, and get back on her mountain bike. “My LDL cholesterol is lower now, so I know what I’m doing is working.”

AI can turbocharge the effectiveness of heart-imaging tests, including CCTA, magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound — the frontline scans that guide doctors in taking care of major heart problems. In studies from 2020 and 2024 by Dey and others, the AI software measured hazardous, hard-to-spot plaque in more than 1,600 patients — and found that those who had the most were three to five times more likely to have a heart attack than those with the least.

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“The medical therapies we have are incredibly strong now,” Berman says. “We could dramatically reduce the heart attack rate if we knew which patients were at very high risk and got them under optimal therapy.”

The FDA has approved more than 180 AI-related advances that improve heart imaging results. And while the AI-enabled, scan-analyzing software developed by Dey, Berman and others isn’t available commercially yet, Dey says it may be soon.

“We are working to get it into the hands of doctors,” she says. Last year, the American Medical Association and Medicare announced changes that would make it easier for doctors to bill insurance for performing the AI measurements of CCTA, Berman explains.

AI advances for diabetes, high blood pressure and inflammation

Personalize type 2 diabetes care. Stanford Medicine scientists have developed an AI-based algorithm that uses readings from a continuous blood glucose monitor to identify a user’s high blood sugar “subtype” — insulin resistance, lack of insulin production or low levels of gut hormones called incretins. Patients can then take preventive dietary or exercise measures before their condition progresses to type 2 diabetes or triggers complications.

Spot pulmonary hypertension. A digital stethoscope from Eko Health with experimental, AI-trained software listens to heart sounds to identify pulmonary hypertension — high blood pressure in the lungs that can overwork the heart. Previously, this condition could be diagnosed only with an echocardiogram or invasive cardiac catheterization. Pulmonary hypertension affects about 1 in 20 adults age 65 and older but is often overlooked.

Find hidden heart inflammation. An experimental AI program developed by the U.K.’s Caristo Diagnostics measures inflammation in fat surrounding arteries in the heart and computes heart attack risk. If approved for use in the U.S., the test could help doctors identify people who would benefit from using colchicine, which was FDA-approved in 2023 for reducing inflammation and the risk of heart attack.

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