Acuitas, through private and public funding is now conducting pre-clinical animal studies to validate its techniques and plans to head into human clinical studies soon. Additional applications might include cancer by spotting early angiogenesis (the development of a network of blood vessels that feed a tumor).

On the business side, company founders including Heinrich; Peter E. Taylor, executive vice president of business development; and Timothy W. James, Ph.D, executive vice president and chief technology officer, are veterans of the diagnostic imaging industry who view their work as aiding radiologists in particular.


"How do you present this data to a radiologist in a way that is readily interpretable and reasonably familiar? That is one of our most interesting challenges because no one has had very much success showing spectra [continuous data values] to a radiologist. We need to present a diagnostic index or a map that looks familiar. But there is no question in our mind that our customer is the diagnostic imaging industry and the radiologist in particular."

The company's competitive advantage lies in its use of smaller data sets that are quickly captured off the scanner, bringing the theoretical potential of this information into practical accessibility. Also, structural features as small as 100 microns (a factor of ten smaller than the resolution achievable in an image) can be visualized, Heinrich said. The company is now seeking strategic partners including MR makers to disseminate its software in modules.

"Our notion is that using the same underlying technology we will add a series of specific clinical applications packages. The measure of change may be different. The way the data is presented may be different. So for each specific clinical application you'll have a separate package on the [MR] scanner. And what we expect to do is to form a strategic alliance with one of the major [OEMs] and allow them to distribute the software rather than doing it ourselves."





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