Seoul St. Mary's Hospital team selected for national quantum computing project targeting cardiovascular precision medicine

A joint research team from Catholic University of Korea Seoul St. Mary's Hospital, the University of Seoul and Flownics has launched an effort to develop technology for analyzing cardiovascular blood flow using quantum computing.

Seoul St. Mary's Hospital announced Tuesday that the team had been selected for a new project under the "2026 Quantum Computing-Based Quantum Advantage Challenge Research Program," overseen by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Research Foundation of Korea.

The research aims to use quantum algorithms to improve the speed and accuracy of computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, analysis in cardiovascular disease, and to identify the conditions under which quantum computing demonstrates "quantum advantage" — outperforming conventional computers in real clinical settings.

The project will run for two and a half years, from 2026 to 2028, and will receive 2.5 billion won ($1.81 million) in government research funding.

The research focuses on applying quantum computing to CFD, which calculates blood flow velocity, pressure and wall shear stress from anatomical imaging such as CT and MRI scans — information that such imaging alone cannot fully capture — to verify its potential for personalized diagnosis of cardiovascular patients.

Specifically, the team plans to develop a three-dimensional deep-learning model that automatically segments the heart, left atrium and aorta, build a quantum-based hemodynamic model, and validate results against real patient cases using 4D Flow MRI. The goal is to achieve at least 95 percent precision in quantum-based CFD compared with conventional CFD.

The research will initially focus on atrial fibrillation — the most common sustained arrhythmia, affecting 2 to 3 percent of the general population — before expanding to other cardiac conditions.

In cardiovascular disease, blood flow velocity and pressure, along with wall shear stress — the frictional force exerted on vessel walls — can influence clot formation and heart muscle damage. Conventional anatomical imaging such as CT and MRI can reveal the degree of vascular narrowing, but falls short of capturing blood flow velocity and pressure.

CFD can calculate blood flow velocity, pressure and wall shear stress from anatomical imaging, but increasing computational density to improve accuracy slows processing speeds, limiting its clinical application.

The research team believes quantum computers can handle high-density calculations with greater accuracy at faster speeds. Unlike classical computers, which process information sequentially using binary states of 0 and 1, quantum computers exploit the principle of superposition — representing multiple states simultaneously — to explore vast numbers of possibilities at once.

To that end, the team plans to combine several techniques: a variational quantum algorithm, in which the quantum computer proposes candidate solutions while the classical computer calculates errors and requests corrections; Krylov subspace search methods; classical shadow measurement techniques; and non-Markovian quantum error mitigation. The approach aims to maintain computational accuracy while reducing the resources and number of measurements required for quantum operations.

Seoul St. Mary's Hospital will oversee the acquisition and validation of clinical data, while the University of Seoul will handle quantum algorithm development and performance benchmarking. Flownics will verify the accuracy of quantum CFD using its 4D Flow MRI-based blood flow analysis platform.

"Personalized diagnosis and treatment based on hemodynamics is central to overcoming cardiovascular disease, but it has yet to be fully realized in clinical practice," said Yoon Jong-chan, a professor of cardiology at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital. "We aim to apply quantum algorithms and error mitigation techniques to the CFD solver stage — where computational costs are highest — to identify the conditions under which quantum advantage emerges in real clinical settings."

Meanwhile, the research team was the only Korean group selected in 2025 for a quantum computing challenge organized by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, part of the US National Institutes of Health. This year, the team was also the sole Korean participant chosen for the Quantum Innovation Catalyzer program, co-organized by Cleveland Clinic and global investment firm K5 Global.