Machine digital eyes can glean far more information from a scan than human experts can readily detect or accurately decipher. It may not be long before a chest x-ray report comes back with your risk of heart attack and stroke over the next decade, your coronary calcium score, your heart ejection fraction, the presence of leaky valve, and whether you have type 2 diabetes (figure). Developments in artificial intelligence (AI) make this scenario likely in the coming years. This advance is an unanticipated, opportunistic output of deep learning AI.

Machine digital eyes can glean far more information from a scan than human experts can readily detect or accurately decipher. It may not be long before a chest x-ray report comes back with your risk of heart attack and stroke over the next decade, your coronary calcium score, your heart ejection fraction, the presence of leaky valve, and whether you have type 2 diabetes (figure). Developments in artificial intelligence (AI) make this scenario likely in the coming years. This advance is an unanticipated, opportunistic output of deep learning AI.