Circle CVI joins EXIT-CVD consortium to advance AI cardiac imaging
Circle Cardiovascular Imaging (Circle CVI) has joined EXIT-CVD, a five-year, EUR 27.6 million European research consortium aiming to transform cardiovascular disease detection, monitoring and treatment through earlier, personalised intervention. Led by University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) and Philips, the initiative brings together 42 public and private partners from 17 countries, and will conduct 22 clinical studies involving more than 14,000 patients across Europe. Enrolment for the first studies is under way this month.
Circle CVI contributes its cvi42 platform, which integrates cardiac MR and CT analysis, coronary plaque quantification, and tools for structural heart and electrophysiology procedure planning. The Calgary-based company's AI-driven image analysis capabilities are intended to support EXIT-CVD's emphasis on imaging-guided disease stratification and personalised clinical decision-making along what the consortium calls the cardiac care continuum.
The programme structure
EXIT-CVD is organised around three intervention windows. Early exit targets detection through digital monitoring before disease is established. Mid exit focuses on personalised risk assessment and targeted interventions for patients with known disease. Late exit addresses advanced therapies and recovery support in later-stage cardiovascular disease. The consortium argues that most clinical improvement to date has occurred within individual specialties, without a complete view of the patient journey over time.
Among the named clinical studies are REMODEL-HF, a multinational randomised trial of remote monitoring in recently hospitalised heart failure patients; GUIDANCE-PCCT, which will compare PCI guided by photon-counting CT against standard angiography-guided procedures; and NOTIFY-2, which will validate AI-driven image and ECG analysis for early diagnosis of left ventricular hypertrophy. The LEADER-PAD study will test spectral CT for early cardiovascular risk stratification in asymptomatic and low-risk symptomatic patients.
The consortium is also embedding equity-by-design principles and implementation science into its research framework. This is a direct response to a recognised pattern in digital health: advanced diagnostics and monitoring tools tend to reach well-resourced populations first, widening outcomes gaps across socioeconomic, sex and gender lines. A FAIR-compliant data platform aligned with the European Health Data Space is planned to support scalable, real-world deployment of the consortium's findings.
Market and competitive context
The cardiovascular imaging software market is one of the more active subsectors in digital health, with AI-assisted analysis tools now available from a range of vendors including large medtech players such as Siemens Healthineers and GE Healthcare, both of which are also named EXIT-CVD partners, as well as a number of specialist software companies. Circle CVI's participation alongside these major players positions it within a broad research coalition rather than in direct competition within the consortium itself, but the resulting clinical evidence base is likely to inform procurement decisions across European health systems over the coming decade.
The Innovative Health Initiative, which co-funds EXIT-CVD, is a EUR 2.4 billion public-private partnership between the European Union and the life sciences industry. It forms part of the EU's Horizon Europe programme and is specifically designed to accelerate the translation of health research into clinical practice. Projects of this scale and duration create long-term brand and data advantages for participating vendors, particularly as European health systems move toward value-based procurement models that reward demonstrable clinical outcomes.
Erkan Akyuz, chief executive at Circle CVI, said the project brings together "the clinical, technology and patient perspectives needed to explore those opportunities across the care journey." The first data readouts from the 22 studies are not expected for some time given the five-year project window, but near-term milestones will include full patient enrolment figures and interim data from the remote monitoring and CT-guided PCI studies.