Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital is pioneering a groundbreaking approach using quantum computing to swiftly and precisely analyze blood flow in cardiovascular disease patients.
The hospital revealed on Tuesday that a collaborative research team, comprising Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, the University of Seoul, and FlowNix, has been awarded a new project under the 2026 Quantum Computing-Based Quantum Advantage Challenge Research Project sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and the National Research Foundation of Korea.
Starting this year through 2028, the research team will receive approximately 2.5 billion KRW (about 1.8 million USD) in national research funding over a two-and-a-half-year period. Their objective is to leverage quantum algorithms to enhance the speed and accuracy of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis for cardiovascular diseases, while also identifying scenarios where quantum computers outperform traditional computers in real-world medical applications.
Quantum advantage occurs when quantum computers demonstrate superior performance in terms of speed, accuracy, or cost-effectiveness compared to classical computers for specific tasks. It’s crucial to prove that quantum computing not only succeeds in calculations but also surpasses the most efficient classical methods.
Computational fluid dynamics is a technology that uses computers to calculate blood flow velocity and pressure. It enables the analysis of blood flow velocity, pressure, and wall shear stress – the frictional force exerted on blood vessel walls – which are difficult to determine using computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans alone.
However, increasing precision by adding more computational elements or incorporating complex vascular structures and conditions significantly extends computation time, limiting its clinical application.
Currently, quantum computers are in the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) stage, where computations are subject to noise and errors. Consequently, researchers primarily employ a hybrid approach, where quantum computers calculate candidate solutions and traditional computers refine them.
The research team plans to implement a variational quantum algorithm that combines quantum and classical computers. They will also utilize Krylov subspace exploration to narrow the computation range, classical shadow techniques to reduce measurement counts, and error mitigation techniques to correct quantum computer noise.
The study will initially focus on atrial fibrillation, the most common persistent arrhythmia affecting 2-3% of the population. The team will develop a three dimensional (3D) deep learning model to automatically distinguish the heart from the left atrial aorta before constructing a quantum-based hemodynamics model.
Subsequently, they will validate real patient cases using 4D Flow MRI, an advanced imaging technique that measures blood flow in three-dimensional space over time. While standard MRI primarily shows anatomical structures, 4D Flow MRI captures the heart and blood vessels in 3D while measuring the direction and speed of blood flow, providing a comprehensive analysis of blood movement.
The team’s ultimate goal is to achieve over 95% accuracy in quantum-based analysis compared to traditional computational fluid dynamics analysis. They will also quantify the conditions under which quantum advantage occurs by comparing circuit resources, measurement counts, and error rates of quantum computers.
Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital will oversee the acquisition of CT images, clinical progress, and prognosis data, as well as manage patient tracking and outcome validation. The University of Seoul will develop quantum algorithms and create performance metrics to assess quantum advantage. FlowNix will validate the accuracy of quantum-based analysis using its proprietary automated blood flow analysis platform based on 4D Flow MRI.
Professor Yoon, the research leader, stated that it will apply quantum algorithms and error mitigation techniques to the computational fluid dynamics analysis stage, which has the highest computational cost, to identify the conditions where quantum advantage emerges in real clinical settings.
The research team aims to expand this technology beyond cardiovascular diseases to diagnose cerebrovascular conditions, design medical devices, and create ‘medical twins’ – virtual replicas of patients’ physical conditions – for precision medicine.
In 2025, the research team from Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital was the only South Korean team selected for the quantum computing challenge organized by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, under the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
This year, they were also the sole Korean team chosen as finalists for the Quantum Innovation Catalyst Program, hosted by the Cleveland Clinic and investment firm K5 Global.