Chin Siang Ong, MBBS, PhD, MPH, assistant professor in the Department of Surgery’s Center for Health Services & Outcomes Research, has received an academic grant from NVIDIA to support the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in aortic imaging and surgical outcomes research.
The funding will support the development of AortaPlot: Edge AI for Automated Aortic CT Analysis and 3D Visualization. Ong is leading the project with Santhi Raj Kolamuri, MBBS, in collaboration with Department of Surgery faculty members Prashanth Vallabhajosyula, MD, MS (cardiac surgery), Uwe Fischer, MD, PhD (vascular surgery), and Eric Schneider, PhD (outcomes research).
AortaPlot is designed to help clinicians analyze CT scans of the aorta, the body’s main artery, more quickly and consistently. The system uses AI to automatically identify key features of the aorta, take precise measurements, and generate clear, three-dimensional visualizations. By bringing these steps together into a single, streamlined process, the platform aims to improve how physicians monitor aortic disease and make treatment decisions.
“Patients with aortic disease often live with their condition for years, and surgical decisions depend on detecting subtle changes across serial imaging,” Ong says. “Manual aortic measurements can take 20 to 30 minutes per scan and may vary between readers. With NVIDIA’s support, AortaPlot—our end-to-end AI platform that segments the aorta, extracts the centerline, reconstructs cross-sections, measures standardized anatomical landmarks, and generates a structured report—can deliver the same assessment in about 30 seconds. AortaPlot turns each scan into a consistent, comparable record, enabling more reliable longitudinal surveillance and providing surgeons and patients with standardized data at every decision point.”
The project will be introduced in phases, starting with patients with thoracic aortic disease at the Yale Aortic Institute. Over time, it has the potential to support faster, more standardized, and more scalable approaches to vascular imaging and care.