Smartphone App may Help Identify Stroke Symptoms as they Occur

A new smartphone application called FAST.AI may help people who are having a stroke or their family and caregivers recognize common stroke symptoms in real time, prompting them to quickly call 9-1-1, according to preliminary research to be presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2023. The meeting, to be held in person in Dallas and virtually Feb. 8-10, 2023, is a world premier meeting for researchers and clinicians dedicated to the science of stroke and brain health.

According to the American Heart Association, stroke is the No. 5 cause of death and a leading cause of disability in the U.S. About 85% of all strokes in the U.S. are ischemic strokes, which are caused by a blood clot in a blood vessel that blocks the flow of blood to the brain.

FAST.AI is a fully automated smartphone application for detection of severe stroke using machine learning algorithms to recognize facial asymmetry (drooping of the muscles in the face), arm weakness and speech changes - all common stroke symptoms. This study is ongoing, and the mobile application is still in development and not available to the public.

The smartphone application uses a facial video of the patient to examine 68 facial landmark points; sensors that measure arm movement and orientation; and voice recordings detect speech changes. Information from each test was sent to a database server for analysis.

Researchers validated FAST.AI’s performance by testing nearly 270 patients with a diagnosis of acute stroke (41% women; average age of 71 years) within 72 hours of hospital admission at four major metropolitan stroke centers in Bulgaria (St. Anna University Hospital in Sofia; University Hospital Haskovo in Haskovo; University Hospital Pulmed in Plovdiv; and University Hospital "Prof. Dr. Stoyan Kirkovich" in Stara Zagora) from July 2021 to July 2022. Neurologists who examined the patients tested the app then compared the FAST.AI results with their clinical impressions.

The analysis found:

  • The smart phone app accurately detected stroke-associated facial asymmetry in nearly 100% of patients.
  • The app accurately detected arm weakness in more than two-thirds of the cases.
  • And while the slurred speech module remains to be fully validated and tested, preliminary analyses confirmed that it may be able to reliably detect slurred speech, according to the researchers.

Clot-busting medication should be administered within three hours (up to four-and-a-half hours in certain eligible patients) after symptoms begin. And the faster the treatment is administered, the more likely for a better recovery: on average, 1.9 million brain cells die every minute that a stroke goes untreated, according to the American Stroke Association, a division of the American Heart Association. Previous research has found that stroke patients who are treated within 90 minutes of their first symptoms were almost three times more likely to recover with little or no disability in comparison to those who received treatment more than 90 minutes after symptoms begin.

"Many stroke patients don’t make it to the hospital in time for clot-busting treatment, which is one reason why it is vital to recognize stroke symptoms and call 9-1-1 right away," said study author Radoslav I. Raychev, M.D., FAHA, a clinical professor of neurology and a vascular neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "These early results confirm the app reliably identified acute stroke symptoms as accurately as a neurologist, and they will help to improve the app’s accuracy in detecting signs and symptoms of stroke."

A limitation of the study is that neurologists (not the individuals, family members or caregivers) conducted the screenings and taught patients how to use the application.

American Stroke Association volunteer expert and EPI and Stroke Council member Daniel T. Lackland, Dr.P.H., FAHA, professor and director of the Division of Translational Neurosciences and Population Studies in the department of neurology at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, South Carolina, applauded the research as a promising tool to address a major health challenge - how to prompt individuals with stroke symptoms to seek care in a short window of opportunity.

"This abstract describes a validated approach for an easy assessment of signs of a stroke and the prompt to seek care. The app may help individuals assess the signs of a stroke without the need to recall the warning signs," said Lackland, who was not involved in the study.

Co-authors are Jeffrey L. Saver, M.D., FAHA; David S. Liebeskind, M.D., FAHA; Svetlin Penkov, Ph.D.; Daniel Angelov, Ph.D.; Krasimir Stoev; Todor Todorov; Teodora Sakelarova, M.D.; Dobrinka Kalpachka, M.D.; Hristiana Pelyova, M.D.; Rostislava Ruseva, M.D.; Svetlana Velcheva, M.D.; Emanuela Kostadinova, M.D.; Denislav Dimov, M.D.; Kolarova Anna, M.D.; Teodora Manolova, M.D.; Filip Alexiev, M.D., Ph.D.; and Ivan Milanov, M.D., Ph.D. Authors’ disclosures are listed in the abstract.

The app is owned by Neuronics Medical, of which Raychev is a co-founder. Boehringer Ingelheim funded the study through a research grant with no app ownership. The Bulgarian Society of Neurology helped with study organization. Study senior author, Ivan Milanov is president of the Bulgarian Society of Neurology.

About the American Stroke Association

The American Stroke Association is devoted to saving people from stroke - the No. 2 cause of death in the world and a leading cause of serious disability. We team with millions of volunteers to fund innovative research, fight for stronger public health policies and provide lifesaving tools and information to prevent and treat stroke. The Dallas-based association officially launched in 1998 as a division of the American Heart Association.

Most Popular Now

Unlocking the 10 Year Health Plan

The government's plan for the NHS is a huge document. Jane Stephenson, chief executive of SPARK TSL, argues the key to unlocking its digital ambitions is to consider what it...

Alcidion Grows Top Talent in the UK, wit…

Alcidion has today announced the addition of three new appointments to their UK-based team, with one internal promotion and two external recruits. Dr Paul Deffley has been announced as the...

AI can Find Cancer Pathologists Miss

Men assessed as healthy after a pathologist analyses their tissue sample may still have an early form of prostate cancer. Using AI, researchers at Uppsala University have been able to...

New Training Year Starts at Siemens Heal…

In September, 197 school graduates will start their vocational training or dual studies in Germany at Siemens Healthineers. 117 apprentices and 80 dual students will begin their careers at Siemens...

AI, Full Automation could Expand Artific…

Automated insulin delivery (AID) systems such as the UVA Health-developed artificial pancreas could help more type 1 diabetes patients if the devices become fully automated, according to a new review...

How AI could Speed the Development of RN…

Using artificial intelligence (AI), MIT researchers have come up with a new way to design nanoparticles that can more efficiently deliver RNA vaccines and other types of RNA therapies. After training...

MIT Researchers Use Generative AI to Des…

With help from artificial intelligence, MIT researchers have designed novel antibiotics that can combat two hard-to-treat infections: drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae and multi-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Using generative AI algorithms, the research...

AI Hybrid Strategy Improves Mammogram In…

A hybrid reading strategy for screening mammography, developed by Dutch researchers and deployed retrospectively to more than 40,000 exams, reduced radiologist workload by 38% without changing recall or cancer detection...

Penn Developed AI Tools and Datasets Hel…

Doctors treating kidney disease have long depended on trial-and-error to find the best therapies for individual patients. Now, new artificial intelligence (AI) tools developed by researchers in the Perelman School...

Are You Eligible for a Clinical Trial? C…

A new study in the academic journal Machine Learning: Health discovers that ChatGPT can accelerate patient screening for clinical trials, showing promise in reducing delays and improving trial success rates. Researchers...

Global Study Reveals How Patients View M…

How physicians feel about artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine has been studied many times. But what do patients think? A team led by researchers at the Technical University of Munich...

New AI Tool Addresses Accuracy and Fairn…

A team of researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has developed a new method to identify and reduce biases in datasets used to train machine-learning algorithms...