Seoul St. Mary's Hospital is developing a technology that uses quantum computing to analyze blood flow in cardiovascular patients more quickly and accurately.
The hospital said on the 25th that a research team led by circulatory medicine professors Yoon Jong-chan and Choi Young, together with radiology professor Jung Jung-im, had been selected for a new project under the "2026 Quantum Advantage Challenge Research Project," run by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea. The team also includes the University of Seoul and Flownix.
"Quantum advantage" refers to a quantum computer's ability to solve problems that conventional computers find difficult or time-consuming, doing so faster and more efficiently. The core of this research is to identify the conditions under which a quantum computer begins to outperform a conventional one in analyzing complex blood flow.
Imaging tests such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can show how narrowed a blood vessel has become, but they cannot capture the speed or pressure of the blood flowing through it. Clinicians have until now relied on computational fluid dynamics, which uses anatomical images and the physical laws of fluids to calculate the velocity, pressure and wall shear stress of blood flow. The problem is that the volume of calculation rises sharply as vessel structures grow more complex or as analysis becomes more precise. Conventional computers take too long to produce results, making the method difficult to use in actual care. The research team believes that using quantum and conventional computers together can process high-density calculations in a short time while improving accuracy.
Following its selection, the team will receive 2.5 billion won ($1.8 million) in state research funding over two and a half years, from 2026 to 2028. Its first target is atrial fibrillation, an arrhythmia so common that it occurs in 2 to 3 percent of the total population. The team plans to develop a three-dimensional deep-learning model that automatically distinguishes the heart, the left atrium and the aorta, and then build a blood flow analysis model using a quantum computer. It will then verify the accuracy by comparing the results with the blood flow of actual patients using "4D flow MRI." 4D flow MRI is an imaging technology that captures the heart and blood vessels in three dimensions while measuring the direction and speed of blood flow over time. Whereas ordinary MRI mainly shows the structure of the heart and blood vessels, 4D flow MRI can analyze how blood actually moves.
Seoul St. Mary's Hospital is responsible for securing patients' CT images and data on their treatment progress and prognosis, and for verifying the research results. The University of Seoul will develop the calculation methods for the quantum computer and establish standards to evaluate its performance, while Flownix will confirm the accuracy of the quantum-based analysis using its own automated blood flow analysis platform based on 4D flow MRI.
Yoon Jong-chan, the lead researcher, said: "Even though patient-specific diagnosis and treatment based on hemodynamics is central to overcoming cardiovascular disease, it has yet to be fully implemented in clinical practice." He added: "Our goal is to apply quantum algorithms and error mitigation techniques to the computational fluid dynamics analysis stage, which requires the most time and computation, and to confirm the conditions under which quantum advantage appears in actual clinical settings."
