A team of undergraduate students from the Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, has won a Gold Award at the National AI Awards 2026 in the category of Innovation and Future-Focused Awards – University AI Innovation for their innovative healthcare project, Cardexa: An AI-Based Cardiac Angiogram and ECG Analysis System.
The award recognizes the team’s outstanding application of artificial intelligence to address a real-world healthcare challenge through the development of an integrated system to support cardiovascular assessment.
Cardexa was developed as a Final Year Project by Samadhi Prathibha, Ushani Sanjana, and Kaveetha Herath. Cardexa is a clinician-in-the-loop AI system developed using a local clinical dataset for model training to support cardiovascular assessment through coronary angiogram and ECG analysis. It performs coronary vessel segmentation, identifies major coronary arteries including the LAD, LCX and RCA, measures stenosis, digitizes paper ECGs into signals, and compares ECG and angiogram findings. The system further supports 3D coronary artery reconstruction from paired angiogram views and generates visual PDF reports for clinical interpretation.
The project was supervised by Dr. Udaya Wijenayake, Senior Lecturer, Department of Computer Engineering, Prof. Sajith Edirisinghe, Professor, Department of Anatomy, and Dr. Gayantha Kodagoda. The team also received medical guidance from Dr. Thisal Semina, Consultant Cardiologist, Base Hospital Panadura. Furthermore, Mr. Mayura Manawadu, PhD Candidate at the University of Melbourne, provided valuable mentorship and technical guidance throughout the project. Their collective expertise, guidance, and encouragement played an important role in transforming the initial concept into a completed project.
The Gold Award at the National AI Awards 2026 marks a significant achievement for the student team and highlights the potential of artificial intelligence research to address practical challenges in healthcare. This recognition also reflects the commitment of the Faculty of Engineering, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, to fostering research, innovation, and interdisciplinary collaboration through its undergraduate engineering programmes.
