Lumitron Technologies CEO Maurie Stang on the company’s very real and very exclusive HyperVIEW EBCS imaging technology.

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Advanced Imaging

Lumitron Raises $20M, Plans to Transform X-Ray

Lumitron Technologies secured another $20M in funding to expand its manufacturing and commercialization capabilities as it works its way to a $1B-plus IPO and the launch of what it calls the biggest breakthrough in the history of X-ray technology. 

Lumitron’s HyperVIEW EBCS imaging system boasts 100x greater image resolution and 100x lower radiation exposure than CT, while matching the size and price tag of a current higher-end CT scanner.

• The HyperVIEW EBCS’ ability to image at the cellular level could also support next-gen “flash radiotherapies” that directly target cancerous cells. 

Lumitron is clearly bullish about its HyperVIEW EBCS scanner, forecasting that it will be used in “every aspect of medicine” and an array of industrial applications.

• The HyperVIEW’s rollout schedule is equally ambitious, targeting use at research universities and hospitals within the next year and clinical readiness within just two years.

Skeptics might find plenty of reasons to question whether Lumitron can actually achieve these lofty goals. For starters, Lumitron lists just four employees on LinkedIn, the general public has only seen artistic renderings of the HyperVIEW scanner, and launching a completely new modality might be one of the most challenging acts in the business of medical imaging.

• However, Lumitron also comes with plenty of credibility. The company was founded by well-established medtech and research leaders, its technology was developed at the famous Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and it now has $20M to fund its next steps. 

The Takeaway

We cover groundbreaking new imaging technologies all the time, but it’s exceptionally rare for those technologies to actually approach commercialization, especially from a relatively unknown company. 

Because of that lack of precedence, hospitals will need to see a ton of evidence before they start making room for their new HyperVIEW scanners. However, if they truly outperform modern CTs by 100x (with the same price and footprint), the Lumitron HyperVIEW might actually prove to be the biggest breakthrough in the history of X-ray.

Automating Echo AI

Check out this Imaging Wire Show featuring Us2.ai’s co-founders, James Hare and Carolyn Lam MBBS, PhD, detailing Us2.ai’s unique origins, impressive capabilities, and big goals to automate echocardiography reporting across the world.

Arterys and Tempus Integrate

Arterys and Tempus have an ambitious vision for their combined diagnostic portfolios, starting with the integration of their radiology and pathology AI platforms. That’s a big deal for both physicians and researchers, and it’s detailed in this post from Tempus COO, Ryan Fukushima.

The Wire

• Trinity’s Incidental Impact: A new study out of Trinity Health Oakland Hospital detailed the positive impact of their Nuance-based incidental findings management system. Analysis of 2,000 patients who underwent cross-sectional CT exams during the year before or after Trinity implemented the program featured a stable number of incidental findings (69 & 70), but revealed significant increases in incidentals that led to follow-up study recommendations (75.4% to 95.7%) and recommended follow-ups that were completed (30.8% to 50.7%).

• Viz.ai VALIDATES: Viz.ai announced results from a large real-world study demonstrating its AI care coordination platform’s ability to reduce telemedicine-based stroke management times. The VALIDATE study (14k patients, 166 facilities, 17 states) showed that hospitals using Viz.ai achieved significantly reduced “door to neurointerventionalist notification time” (50min vs. 89.5min), regardless of whether centers had thrombectomy capabilities. Viz.ai-equipped hospitals also achieved faster initial telemedicine stroke code activation times (-4min), door to stroke activation times (-3min), and door to needle times (-4min).

• Healthcare State of the Union: Healthcare was a recurring theme throughout President Biden’s 7,300-word State of the Union address last week. Becker’s rounded up 10 takeaways from the speech, most of which centered around what seemed to be a victory lap for a pandemic that “no longer controls our lives,” capping prescription costs for Medicare patients, and progress with the Cancer Moonshot initiative. Abortion was also mentioned 72 times during the address, with the president vowing to veto any national ban that crosses his desk.

• Interval Breast Cancer’s Unfavorable Characteristics: Analysis of 211k John Hopkins screening mammograms provided more evidence of interval breast cancers’ unfavorable characteristics. Among the 1.2k patients diagnosed with breast cancer within a year of screening, the study’s 96 interval cancers were more associated with dense breasts (78% vs. 61%), and were more often primary tumor stage two or higher (43% vs. 12%), regional lymph node stage one or higher (22% vs. 12%), and triple negative (21% vs. 6%) with high ki67 proliferation indices (62% vs. 38%).

• Hyperfine Swoop’s FDA Expansion: Hyperfine’s Swoop portable MR system scored another new FDA clearance, this time supporting its upgraded AI-powered software. The newly-cleared software improves the Swoop’s DWI sequence image quality by increasing its signal-to-noise ratio, while expanding the system’s field of view by 10% for T1, T2, and FLAIR sequences to match other DWI sequence’s 20 cm field of view. The new clearance continues Hyperfine’s software-based enhancements, coming eight months after launching new T1 Standard and Fast T2 sequences.

• CT AI Predicts Pulmonary Function: A team of South Korean researchers developed a chest CT AI-based approach for predicting patients’ pulmonary function, potentially creating a more accurate pathway for spirometry lung function screenings. The researchers trained and tested the AI model using data from 16k patients who underwent same-day LDCT and spirometry screenings, predicting which patients would have high-risk spirometry results with 86% to 90% accuracy.

• Qure.ai & Mylab’s TB X-Ray: Qure.ai launched a partnership with Mylab Discovery Solutions, allowing Mylab to embed Qure.ai’s qXR chest X-ray solution into its forthcoming handheld X-ray scanner that will be used for India’s tuberculosis screening programs. Qure.ai has apparently established itself the go-to partner for X-ray companies looking to embed TB AI into their portable scanners, following similar qXR integrations with Fujifilm and MinXray.

• Healthcare Bankruptcies on the Rise: Healthcare company chapter 11 bankruptcy filings were up 84% in 2022, according to a new report from Gibbins Advisors. Senior care and pharmaceutical companies accounted for nearly half of the filings, with just two hospital bankruptcies filed in 2022 (vs. 10 in 2019). Bankruptcies rose significantly throughout the year – 3x more filings in Q4 than Q1 – and Gibbins expects venture dependent startups and rural hospitals to face mounting financial pressures as 2023 rolls on.

• Nanox.ai Connects to Nuance PIN: Nanox announced its connection to the Nuance Precision Imaging Network (PIN), allowing provider organizations to utilize Nanox.AI’s FDA cleared HealthOST and HealthCCSng solutions to detect incidental signs of osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease in routine CT exams, while leveraging PIN for care team communication. Although Nanox is best known for its unique scanner and marketing tactics, these incidental solutions got their start within AI trailblazer Zebra Med before it was acquired by Nanox in mid-2021.

• CMS Suspends Surprise Billing Dispute Process: CMS indefinitely suspended the No Surprises Act’s independent dispute resolution process (IDR), less than a week after a Texas U.S. District Court ruled that parts of the process violate the Administrative Procedure Act (while benefiting payors). CMS barred all certified IDR entities from making new payment determinations while federal departments are revising the IDR processes, which might mean that a new process that’s more favorable to providers is on the way.

• Canada Diagnostic Centres’ Western Expansion: Major Canadian imaging center company Canada Diagnostic Centres (CDC) put its private equity funding to work, acquiring Guardian Radiology (17 imaging centers, 13 rads) and The Ultrasound Center (4 imaging centers, 12 sonographers). The acquisitions expand CDC into Saskatchewan and increase its presence in Alberta and British Columbia, while giving it 38 locations serving ~700k Canadian patients annually.

Purpose Built Workflow: Beyond the worklist

Discover how to drive radiology workflow efficiencies, improve workload distribution, and streamline communication using Nuance’s workflow & communications solutions on Wednesday, February 22 (12:00 p.m. ET).

Meaningful Innovation in 4D CT

If you’re ready to get more from your interventional suite, tune in to this Imaging Wire Show featuring Canon Medical Systems’ vascular leader, Bill Newsom, exploring the meaningful innovation that went into Canon’s 4D CT technology.

Merative’s Best in KLAS

Merative’s Merge Imaging Solutions had a big Best in KLAS 2023, winning the Cardiology and Hemodynamics categories, while scoring second place honors in the Large PACS, Universal Viewer, and VNA categories. Merge Cardio previously scored Best in KLAS for six consecutive years, while Merge Hemo has been ranked #1 for 10 years.

The Resource Wire

• If you’re in the business of using or providing AI, there’s a good chance you spend a lot of time managing AI evaluations. But are your evaluations as efficient or effective as they could be? Check out this Imaging Wire Show with Riverain Technologies CEO, Steve Worrell, detailing the best practices for mitigating AI adoption risks, today and into the future.

• Radiology is leading healthcare’s AI revolution, and yet many people in radiology are just starting to build their understanding of AI. That’s why Bayer published its truly Complete Guide to Artificial Intelligence in Radiology, detailing how AI can address radiology’s challenges, AI’s core use cases, and AI’s path towards adoption.

• Faced with growing subspecialty volumes, Diversified Radiology of Colorado adopted Intelerad’s InteleOne XE enterprise workflow solution to ensure all appropriate cases are read by subspecialists, while reducing its average TAT to under 17 minutes.

• We may be entering a third wave of imaging AI’s rapid evolution, that brings a shift from narrow point solutions to comprehensive multi-finding AI systems. Join this discussion with annalise.ai Chief Medical Officer, Rick Abramson, MD, exploring how this transition could take place, how radiologist and VC perspectives on AI are changing, and how AI might continue to evolve in the future.

• Check out this Change Healthcare video explaining the difference between single-tenant and multitenant cloud architecture, and how multitenant solutions can improve your efficiency and flexibility.

• See what UC Davis has to say about United Imaging’s EXPLORER Total Body Scanner, the first whole-body PET.

• There’s a lot to learn from St. Michael’s Hospital’s experience implementing the Hyperfine Swoop portable MRI at the point-of-care. See what their hospital leaders had to say about how the ultra-low-field MRI technology impacted their patients and clinicians in this on-demand webinar.

• We hear a lot about AI being the next big thing or being immature and overhyped. This set of Blackford Analysis editorials reviews the challenges that are still holding back imaging AI, and the areas that AI is delivering genuine clinical benefits.

• Proper patient data anonymization and deidentification is a must, but it can be challenging to do while still retaining clinical relevance. This Enlitic panel of data anonymization experts explores how to do anonymization and deidentification the right way, while giving a sneak peek into Enlitic’s upcoming anonymization product, Curie|ENCOG.

• Faced with the task of monitoring the thousands of exams its algorithms analyze each day, Qure.ai leveraged CARPL.ai’s validation workflow to create a real-time performance dashboard. See how they did it here.

• Faced with rising scan volumes and many elderly patients, Lake Medical Imaging implemented Subtle Medical’s Subtle MR efficiency solution across its eight MR scanners, allowing it to scan 40 additional patients per day while maintaining quality of care.

• Are you seeing the complete picture with your outdated cardiac PET imaging? Check out this Siemens Healthineers patient story, showing how cardiac PET/CT revealed microvascular diseases in a patient who had normal uptake on his PET exam.

• See how New Jersey’s Ramapo Radiology Associates overcame their CD burning problems and improved their physician and patient experiences with Novarad CryptoChart.

• GE HealthCare’s AIR Recon DL solution now covers PROPELLER imaging sequences, improving performance for applications that are susceptible to motion and distortion. That’s a big deal for applications where SNR, in-plane resolution, and scan time are often competing factors, and it can provide significant clinical benefits if used as described in this report.