▲ Professor Jung-Min Ahn of the Division of Cardiology is performing a stent procedure.

Coronary angiography is often used to determine the stent size before a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). However, given the differences and complexity of each patient’s lesion and the 2D-based judgment involved, the outcome of the procedure required heavy reliance on the experience and competence of medical professionals. For the first time in the world, the team led by Professor Jung-Min Ahn of the Division of Cardiology at Asan Medical Center has released study findings demonstrating that the therapeutic efficacy of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) based on optimal stent size analyzed by AI could be as safe as using high-resolution imaging devices that look directly into the inside of the blood vessels.

The conventional high-resolution imaging device, intravascular optical coherence tomography, is a 3D-based imaging tool providing direct observation of the inside of the blood vessels. While it enables the most accurate assessment of lesions, the actual usage rate is only 10-40% due to the high examination cost, reaching several million won, and the long procedure time. The AI-based percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) analysis system instantly evaluates the internal diameter of a patient’s blood vessel, lesion length, and the degree of stenosis based on extensive data sets to calculate the optimal stent size.

The team conducted a six-month follow-up study on treatment outcomes of 196 patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) using AI-based coronary angiography and 199 patients who underwent coronary intervention using the optical coherence tomography (OCT), a conventional high-resolution imaging device, across 13 domestic medical institutions from October 2022 to February 2024. The study found that the minimum stent area, the extent to which the narrowed coronary artery was widened, was 6.3±2.2mm² in the AI-based angiography group and 6.2±2.2mm² in the OCT group. With no statistically significant differences between the two groups, both groups were treated safely. Additionally, the two groups displayed no significant difference in procedural safety indicators, including stent expansion failure, dissection, and adjacent site disease. The incidence of major clinical events, such as death, myocardial infarction, and thrombosis caused by heart diseases, was 0% at six months after the procedure in both groups.

This prospective study was published in ‘JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions,’ a prestigious journal in cardiology, and was presented at the recent TCT conference in Washington, D.C., United States.