In a laboratory in Rome, Marco Evangelos Biancolini and his team explore the anatomy of patients to evaluate the effectiveness of various surgical interventions.
However, it is not real people who are under his scalpel, but projected onto his digital double screen, which reflects the biochemical composition of each of these people. This technique can open new horizons in the medical field and provide access to personalized health care.
Double the number of patients
By testing methods and drugs on “digital twins,” medical staff can identify which treatments are best for each case. Biancolini’s team studies aneurysms, abnormal enlargements or bulges in the artery wall.
“We can’t afford to go through trial and error with the patient, but with the digital twin we can restart the operation several times,” said Biancolini, associate professor of machine design at the University of Rome.
He is leading an EU-funded research project aimed at training young researchers in the multiple uses of digital twins in the treatment and prevention of aneurysms. These conditions can be present in people from birth or can be the result of disorders such as high blood pressure, fatty plaques and trauma.
title MeditateThe four-and-a-half-year project will end in June 2024. It brings together 25 academic and industrial partners from Italy, France, Greece, Norway and Switzerland.
fatal weakness
about 3% Aneurysms occur in the world’s population, and many people don’t know they have them until it’s too late.
When an aneurysm ruptures, the consequences are dire. Up to 35% of people with a ruptured aneurysm die, and a third of those who survive are able to return to normal life.
In the face of potentially debilitating disease that can strike anytime and anywhere in the circulatory system, efforts are being made to find ways to save more lives.
Digital twins can help better detect specific warning signs in real patients and enable faster adoption of preventive measures.
Researchers in the MeDiTATE project hope to increase survival rates for people with aneurysms, ensure they are detected earlier and improve prevention.
If an aneurysm is diagnosed or suspected in a patient, a digital twin can be created based on their physiology. Specialists can then conduct tests to provide tailor-made treatment.
Because it is difficult to collect data on a person’s body without invasive procedures, researchers are also 3D printing replicas of patients to gather the necessary information so that the digital twin is as perfect as possible.
“Combining the patient, replicator and digital twin closes the loop,” Biancolini said.
Easy to use
While digital twins are already used for research, MeDiTATe hopes to make them easier to use for healthcare professionals.
The team worked with hospitals and gathered perspectives from healthcare professionals. The goal is to understand what information a patient needs from a digital twin to be able to draw conclusions about their aneurysm.
The team’s goal is to create a digital twin to treat aneurysms. Members of the MeDiTATE consortium have already filed several patents for this purpose.
Mr. Biancolini believes that digital twins will be the future of healthcare because, by being more reliable and accurate, they will make traditional replicas of human body parts less necessary.
“The number of physical prototypes has decreased significantly in recent decades, because the accuracy of digital simulations is now so great that it can be trusted,” he said.
Atrial fibrillation, stroke
Other EU-funded researchers are using digital technologies to provide another form of healthcare support.
project MAESTRIA The data set collection is building a platform that will help doctors understand and treat atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat) and stroke. The five-year initiative will end in February 2026.
Project members are looking for specific biological markers that indicate the risk of developing these two diseases.
The team is developing digital tools based on a new generation of biological markers and which use big data from artificial intelligence and state-of-the-art techniques in the fields of imaging, electrocardiography and “omics” technology. The aim is to improve the diagnosis and individual treatment of patients.
In the EU, a stroke is a Another cause of death and one of the leading sources of disability in adults.
“When someone suffers from atrial fibrillation and has a stroke, it is the result of a pathological process that started many years ago,” said Stéphane Hattem, professor of cardiovascular physiology at the Institute of Cardiometabolism and Nutrition in Paris.
Thanks to the MAESTRIA project, researchers will be able to demonstrate, according to him, that adipose tissue in the heart is a key biological marker of atrial fibrillation and stroke. The availability of large data sets examining these two factors in patents should allow this conclusion to be reached.
Recruitment and testing
Mr. Hatem, who coordinated the project, and his team are preparing to test the platform that is at the heart of the project.
Researchers are recruiting patients in European countries including France, Germany and Spain. The tests will be conducted in two and a half years.
If the trial proves conclusive, it will be extended to people in third countries. Indeed, the more representative the participants are of the population spectrum, the more useful the datasets.
“For an algorithm to be useful at the clinical care level, it is extremely important to validate it in a wider population, not limited to Western European countries,” Hattem said.
The platform developed as part of the project will be accessible to other health professionals.
People with different data sets can add them to the platform and thus contribute to the conclusions that can be drawn from it. For example, a researcher studying stroke in Riga, Latvia can provide their data and in return access all the information on the platform.
Ultimately, the initiative could help experts better understand biological markers and thus develop more targeted and therefore more effective treatments.
Like Mr. Biancolini, Mr. Hatem believes that digital technologies are essential to improving health care.
“With personalized medicine, it becomes possible to precisely and precisely identify the risk faced by each individual,” Hatem said.
The research presented in this article was funded by the EU and, in the case of MeDiTATe, by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA). The views of the interviewees do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission.
More information
This article was originally publishedthe horizonEU magazine dedicated to research and innovation.
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