Dr. Shipra Arya Awarded American Heart Association Grant for Automated PAD Prognostication Tool

Dr. Shipra Arya has received a $300,000 American Heart Association (AHA) Transformational Project Award to develop an automated method for prognosticating peripheral artery disease (PAD) using deep learning. The three-year project, Automated Peripheral Artery Calcium Score for Risk Stratification and Outcome Prediction in Peripheral Artery Disease, runs from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2028.

The study aims to create an objective, fully automated Peripheral Artery Calcium Score (PACS) by applying deep learning to quantify calcium in lower extremity computed tomography (CT) scans. The team will compare PACS to current gold standard diagnostic measures, including the ankle-brachial index and toe-brachial index, and assess its ability to predict outcomes such as mortality, amputation, and major adverse limb events.

“This project is the first step toward integrating automated PACS into diagnosis, risk stratification, and treatment for PAD—similar to how coronary artery calcium scoring has transformed the care of coronary artery disease,” Arya said.

Funding will support the development and validation of the automated PACS measure, eliminating the need for semi-automated manual measurements. It will also fund the creation of advanced deep learning models for calcium detection and quantification, comparisons against existing measures, and evaluation of PACS as a predictor of clinical outcomes.

The project team includes Akshay Chaudhari, PhD (Biomedical Data Science, expert in machine learning for medical imaging); Fatima Rodriguez, MD, MPH (Cardiology, expert in cardiovascular prevention and imaging analytics); Jillian Melbourne (research program manager and analyst); and Benjamin Liu (medical student and AI/ML analyst).