LSU BAE Professor Receives CAP Award for Cardiovascular Research With OLOL
February 03, 2025

Dr. Jorge Castellanos and LSU BAE Assistant Professor Bruno Rego
LSU Biological & Agricultural Engineering Assistant Professor Bruno Rego recently received a Collaboration in Action Program (CAP) Award from LSU and Our Lady of the Lake Health for his proposal to leverage electronic health records and advanced image processing to identify and address disparities in the diagnosis and treatment of heart valve disease.
Rego, who serves as the principal investigator on the project, is working with Our Lady of the Lake Structural Heart Program Director Dr. Jorge Castellanos to investigate how patients’ medical records and clinical images can be automatically screened to more accurately and quickly diagnose aortic stenosis (AS) and mitral regurgitation (MR), two of the most common forms of heart valve disease.
“There is a big prevalence of aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation, and we think that the patients who come to the hospital aren’t all having these conditions captured,” Castellanos said. “So, we’re trying to study the referral patterns—why patients may not be referred for treatment—and try to establish better tools to identify these patients earlier and before they get too sick.”
“If left untreated, AS and MR can lead to severe pathological outcomes, including heart failure, stroke, thromboembolism, arrhythmias, endocarditis, and pulmonary hypertension,” Rego said. “Many patients with AS or MR can benefit greatly from minimally-invasive surgical interventions like transcatheter aortic valve replacement and transcatheter edge-to-edge repair.”
Even though these effective treatment options have grown in popularity in recent years, long-term clinical experience at Our Lady of the Lake suggests that some patients with either diagnosed or undiagnosed AS and MR have not been referred for these procedures.
“A lot of patients undergo cardiovascular imaging for all sorts of reasons, and the main concern at the time of imaging might not be AS or MR, especially if it’s still relatively mild,” Rego said. “Another problem is that there are different types of AS and MR, and some are more difficult to properly diagnose. The images exist in the Our Lady of the Lake database, but people just haven’t necessarily looked at them in the right way. Dr. Castellanos suspects there are patients who have one or both of these issues and should be referred to these modern minimally-invasive surgical corrections.”
“When you do an ultrasound of the heart, you look at pump function, valve function and dozens of measurements that may not necessarily make it to the final report,” Castellanos said. “The data is there that could indicate the patient has a condition that has not been diagnosed.”
The first thing Rego and Castellanos will do is sort through an anonymized database of Our Lady of the Lake’s electronic health records and clinical images, and use statistical analysis to figure out who is getting referred to these particular surgeries, who is not, and why.
“One big focus of CAP for this first round of projects is social determinants of health,” Rego said. “What is it about patient A that gets them referred while patient B does not? How can we predict that based on not just healthcare setting and a patient’s individual medical history, but also any number of social factors that can correlate with health outcomes?”
The second part of their project is to develop a software tool based on artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to screen through images from the database, automatically detect patients with AS and MR, and provide personalized guidance on possible next steps, ranging from periodic follow-ups to minimally-invasive interventions or even open-heart surgery in some cases, based on a patient’s individual disease characteristics and other factors. A physician would then confirm the diagnosis themselves and make specific treatment recommendations.
“If you start missing these problems for a long period of time, it’s harder to fix, and the patient’s outcome is much less favorable because the heart itself is trying to adapt to these diseases,” Rego said.
Patient privacy and confidentiality will not be an issue with this project. The medical records will be anonymized before the analysis begins, so LSU will have the data and images, and social and demographic markers, but not direct identifiable information like a patient’s name or exact address.
“There’s a lot of data that needs to be reviewed, but we have the resources to do it now that this project has been funded through CAP,” Rego said.
“Our Lady of the Lake is really excited about this collaboration,” Castellanos said. “I think it’s extremely important. Moving forward, I think this is going to change the way we practice.”
The Louisiana State University System, through the LSU Agricultural and Mechanical Campus, and in collaboration with Our Lady of the Lake Health, has launched a new, unprecedented research opportunity called Collaboration in Action (CAP). Generously funded by Our Lady of the Lake Health, LSU's Championship Health Partner, this program seeks to advance research in the priority focus areas of Cardiovascular Disease and Care, Comprehensive Cancer Care, Trauma and Neuroscience, Chronic Respiratory Disease, and Sports Medicine and Performance.
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