by
Lisa Chamoff, Contributing Reporter | July 04, 2022
From the July 2022 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
“It's a way to boost your clinical confidence in the area you were just scanning to ensure that you're in the right place,” Wager said.
CureMetrix
CureMetrix recently conducted a retrospective research study for a new product under development, cmAngio, that uses a screening mammography exam to assess a patient’s age-based risk of heart disease. The product is AI-based detection software that helps doctors assess a patient’s risk of coronary heart disease (CHD).
The research study found that radiologists detected 72% of breast arterial calcifications, while cmAngio detected 95% with 98% specificity.
"To the extent that we can take (the mammogram) experience and leverage it into more clinical value for the patient and, for that matter, for the institution, then we're creating real value," said Kevin Harris, co-founder and president of CureMetrix. “There's no new radiation, no new effort by the patient, no new effort by the doctor. It's basically this automatic win.”
Looking at 150,000 mammograms across five institutions, CureMetrix found that although the breast arterial calcifications were present in about 17% of cases, they were only reported in 2%.
“It is an incidental finding and it's not being reported, and that's really the challenge,” Harris said. “The tool exists to be able to automate that process, to make this easy for the doctors so they don't have to do anything extra.”
cmAngio is in development and not yet available for commercial use in the U.S. or any other international markets.
Delphinus Medical Technologies
In October, Delphinus Medical Technologies received FDA premarket approval of its SoftVue 3D Whole Breast Ultrasound Tomography System for use as an adjunct screening tool to mammography for patients with dense breast tissue.
To use the system, the patient lies down on the table and each breast is suspended in water. The device has a ring transducer that uses what the company calls triple acoustic detection technology, capturing reflection, speed and attenuation, said Mark Forchette, the president and chief executive officer of Delphinus Medical Technologies.
“We have three pieces of data, and with that we can characterize masses in tissue at a much more definitive level than anything else,” Forchette said.
A recent clinical study of the system enrolled 8,500 patients and demonstrated a 10% improvement in accuracy, 20% improvement in sensitivity and 8% improvement in specificity.
“With that, we've demonstrated the ability to not only find additional cancers, but to potentially reduce callbacks and unnecessary biopsies,” Forchette said.
