Medical treatment is one of the first areas where AI has landed, and among the application scenarios that have landed in the medical field, medical imaging is the most widely used. Since 2015, China has introduced a series of relevant incentive policies to vigorously promote the development of domestic medical imaging equipment. In recent years, in the context of policy-driven AI-enabled medical imaging, medical imaging has developed rapidly, and the approval of devices has hit a record high – according to the National Medicines and Pharmaceutical Administration (NMPA), as of July 5, 2023, the NMPA has approved a total of 70 Class III certificates covering 13 types of auxiliary diagnostic products such as coronary arteries and lung nodules.
Unlike downstream-assisted diagnosis, image reconstruction enhancement, which is at the upstream stage of the workflow, is also gradually developing, driven by the latest AI technologies. The related technology products can significantly shorten the scanning time and increase the accuracy of the doctor’s diagnosis while ensuring the image quality, providing patients with faster and safer diagnosis and treatment services.
Recently, Radyn Health has made a breakthrough in the field of AI medical imaging, and the company’s two self-developed reconstruction enhancement products, RaDynCT and RaDynSPECT, have been awarded the NMPA Class II registration certificate. Together with the two reconstruction-enhanced products RaDynMR and RaDynPET, which will be approved for registration in 2022, Radyn Health has officially become the manufacturer with the largest number of approved registration certificates and the widest coverage of segments in this field. Currently, most of the 70 NMPA-registered products are in the field of auxiliary diagnosis, but unlike them, the products developed by Radyn Health focus on image reconstruction and enhancement, and the related technology can realize the effects of accelerating MRI scans and reducing the radiation dose of CT and nuclear medicine imaging examinations.
In the highly competitive field of medical AI, how did Radyn Health manage to have all four products approved within three years? What are the advantages of the products? How do they differentiate themselves?
In the past, with traditional medical imaging technology, patients often need to spend a long time in line, and imaging equipment usually has a high dose of radiation, which can pose a greater threat to patient health and safety. In addition, the imaging effect of the old type of equipment is poor, which is also unfavorable for doctors to accurately determine the disease. It can be seen that the direction of image reconstruction and enhancement has a large clinical pain point and high market demand.
In addition, usually some foreign medical imaging manufacturers develop new technologies, will not be provided to third-party enterprises, but only applied to their own brand equipment, and the new technology can only be applied to new equipment models, which has certain limitations in the application scenarios. At the same time, some overseas AI medical imaging big data companies, there is also a greater risk of data leakage, which Dr. Gong Nanjie, the founder of Shadow Motion Medical, knows well from his past entrepreneurial experience.
If only one sentence to evaluate Radyn Health, Dr. Gong Nanjie commented, “Radyn Health is an AI medical imaging company with Chinese R&D, Chinese data, and Chinese team.” In the field of medical imaging, the domestic started relatively late, due to the high barriers to technology development and long cycle, the market has long been monopolized by imports. It is only in recent years that some domestic enterprises have gradually mastered the core technology, in the basic clinical applications, domestic imaging equipment is being imported to achieve substitution, but in the high-end equipment and software, there is still a certain gap between domestic enterprises. Radyn Health, as a domestic company, has always practiced the concept of “Made in China” from technical team to data, software and algorithms, and strictly complied with the national AI regulation and data security protection regulations to provide absolutely safe data protection.
In addition, the company’s products have strong compatibility and cover all models, applicable to all mainstream imaging examination equipment and hospital PACS systems including GE, Siemens, Philips, United Film, and can be seamlessly integrated into the existing imaging department workflow, and can also be integrated into any model of existing equipment, which can effectively assist hospitals and medical examination centers in prolonging the life of the old equipment or realizing the upgrading of the low-matched products at a low cost.
Currently, Radyn Health mainly focuses on the reconstruction and enhancement of medical images, with RaDynPET, RaDynMR, RaDynSPECT, and RaDynCT being the most rapidly developed and mature products.
- In Positron Emission Tomography (PET), RaDynPET is a fast, low-dose PET image enhancement platform that improves image quality while increasing imaging speed by up to 4x and reducing radiation dose by up to 75% to improve the patient experience.
- For Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), RaDynMR is an AI-powered, deep learning algorithm-based image enhancement system that improves the quality of MRI images as well as enhancing the patient experience.RaDynMR real-time reconstructs MRI images through AI, enabling 2-4x, or even 10x accelerated scans to reduce examination costs; and optimizes machine-generated MRI images are optimized with deep learning algorithms that reduce artifacts, noise reduction and enhance resolution.
- For single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), RaDynSPECT is a deep learning-based SPECT image acceleration and enhancement software. raDynSPECT supports fusion of SPECT and CT images, accelerates SPECT scans up to 7x, enables simultaneous structural and functional imaging, and allows precise localization of the location, nature, and extent of lesions. Imaging quality is diagnostic grade and reduces contrast use by up to 86%.
- On computed tomography (CT) scans, RaDynCT can increase image resolution by up to 4 times, allowing physicians to better visualize small lesions. On the other hand, RaDynCT can reduce the radiation dose by about 70%, substantially reducing the radiation hazard of X-rays, and at the same time, it can effectively reduce the loss of the bulb, reduce the frequency of replacement of the bulb in medical institutions, further saving medical costs, and even extend the life of the equipment that has a low configuration and serious performance degradation after a long time of use.
It is worth mentioning that the current production of these products has improved imaging speed and image quality, which can greatly improve the efficiency of doctors’ examination, shorten the queuing time of patients, thus improving the patient experience, and can also bring about the enhancement of patient throughput, as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of hospitals.
Radyn Health’s team is a typical R&D team, focusing on algorithm and software development, with most of them coming from Tsinghua University, Peking University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley and other well-known domestic and international universities. The whole team is young, with the energy of “the newborn calf is not afraid of tigers”, the four products built in three years have been deployed to major hospitals, medical checkup centers for clinical and business cooperation. The team has been granted more than 20 domestic patents and PCT international patents, as well as several software copyrights, and Radyn Health has also received attention from the local government in the process of development, and has been granted a number of entrepreneurial talent support program grants. At the same time, the company’s team has carried out cutting-edge cooperation with dozens of top hospitals and third-party imaging centers around the world, and successfully realized commercial landing, and the relevant international academic papers have been published in Medical Physics, Physics in Medicine & Biology, and so on.
When talking about the company’s future plans, Dr. Gong Nanjie divided Radyn Health’s development strategy into three phases, covering all imaging products, expanding from medical technology departments to clinical departments, and moving towards non-medical applications.
AI medical imaging can be categorized into MRI, CT, ultrasound, X-ray, DSA (Digital Subtraction Angiography) and so on. Currently, Radyn Health has the most comprehensive reconstruction and enhancement product line across PET, MR, SPECT and CT, which has covered about 70%~80% of the mainstream medical imaging technologies. The company is developing other imaging technologies such as ultrasound and DSA, and hopes to cover the full range of imaging products in the short term.
In the medium to long term, Radyn Health will continue to expand in quantitative analysis and assisted diagnosis. On the other hand, the company is not limited to doing algorithm research, and hopes to realize the combination of hardware and software, and expand its products from medical technology departments such as radiology to other clinical departments. At the same time, Radyn Health will also enrich its business model, taking into account both 2B and 2C modes to form a new charging model.
In the long run, Dr. Gong hopes that Radyn Health will come out from hospitals and contribute more to the health and well-being of the general public with the help of AI medical imaging technology.
Radyn Health has completed seed and angel rounds of financing, and will start a new financing plan to expand its core R&D team and sales team. The company is also building a nationwide sales network, hoping to reach the willing users at all levels across the country more quickly and comprehensively, in order to expand the layout of the product.