MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota— Imbio, LLC, a diagnostic medical imaging software company, announced today that the company has exclusively licensed technology for evaluation of the lung airway tree developed by researchers at the Heidelberg University Hospital.
Extracting and labeling the bronchial tree from thoracic CT scans is essential to accurately quantify airway morphology which is increasingly used to measure the progression and treatment response for a variety of lung diseases such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Asthma. Quantification of the airway tree geometry also provides valuable information for bronchoscopic procedure planning and guidance during surgical interventions. Currently, from an acquired CT scan series, an imaging expert can perform manual airway tree segmentation, but the complexity of the airway tree makes manual segmentation tedious and extremely time-consuming.
Recently, medical researchers at the Heidelberg University Hospital developed a sophisticated image-processing algorithm to label the airway tree and make these measurements automatically. The state-of- the-art algorithm labels the airway tree anatomy and quantifies the airway wall thickness and lumen diameter from a patient’s inspiratory CT scan series. The algorithm’s results are processed in the background without any user interaction or interruption to the workflow.
Cynthia Maier, CEO of Imbio stated, “Heidelberg University Hospital is a world leader in Thoracic Radiology and Pulmonology and has advanced the field of COPD and asthma research tremendously with their research. We are very excited to partner with them to bring their ground-breaking technology to market as a cost-effective and widely accessible cloud-based solution. It is our vision that the same exceptional technologies they rely for diagnosing their patients should be made accessible to healthcare providers everywhere.”
Professor Dr. Claus Peter Heussel, Head of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology with Nuclear Medicine, Thoraxklinik GmbH at Heidelberg University Hospital stated, “Computer assisted airway quantification breaks down complex CT image data to simple, understandable numerics necessary for evaluation of lung air-flow limitation and bronchial inflammation. The complete analysis of the whole tracheobronchial tree qualifies this algorithm for analysis of systemic and regional bronchial disease treatment, as well as, drug development. As a fully automated technique, this algorithm will perfectly complement Imbio’s focus on imaging biomarkers integrated in the clinical workflow.”
About Imbio, LLC
Imbio is transforming medical image analysis by making breakthrough Radiology diagnostics accessible and affordable for all physicians. Imbio offers quantitative biomarker analyses that are fully automated to preserve physicians’ time while providing data and visualization to help make better personalized patient care decisions. Imbio’s flexible Cloud and Enterprise SaaS solutions eliminate the cost and complexity that have kept valuable advanced imaging out of reach for many healthcare providers in the past. Imbio’s FDA cleared and CE marked Lung Density Analysis™ is part of the company’s portfolio of imaging solutions for smoking-‐related diseases. For more information visit www.imbio.com.
Heidelberg University Hospital and Medical Faculty
Internationally recognized patient care, research, and teaching Heidelberg University Hospital is one of the largest and most prestigious medical centers in Germany. The Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University belongs to the internationally most renowned biomedical research institutions in Europe. Both institutions have the common goal of developing new therapies and implementing them rapidly for patients. With about 12,600 employees, training and qualification is an important issue. Every year, around 66,000 patients are treated on a fully or partially inpatient basis and over 1,000,000 patients have been treated on an outpatient basis in more than 50 clinics and departments with 1,900 beds. Currently, about 3,500 future physicians are studying in Heidelberg; the reform Heidelberg Curriculum Medicinale (HeiCuMed) is one of the top medical training programs in Germany. For more information about Heidelberg University Hospital, please visit www.klinikum.uni-heidelberg.de.