(Republished with permission from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This article originally ran In the business section on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2007)
By Rachel Melcer St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Radiologist and researcher Joe Culver is developing a brain-imaging system to help doctors diagnose and treat premature infants — and is helping form a company that could bring it to market.
Culver, an assistant professor at Washington University School of Medicine, is overseeing development of the technology for Cephalogics LLC, a startup being formed by the university and a Boston investment firm. That firm, Allied Minds Inc., is providing $500,000 over two years to create a prototype and conduct clinical trials.
If the technology lives up to its founders’ expectations, the company that now exists on paper will take shape with a management team and a local office, said Chris Silva, Allied Minds’ chief executive.
“Within 18 months to two years, we hope to be able to have this product in the marketplace,” he said. “We think it will benefit society once it’s out there.”
The device uses diffuse optical tomography, an emerging technique for mapping functional activity in the human brain by measuring the movement of blood and the level of oxygen in it.
Culver is working on a patch, roughly 2 inches by 4 inches, that contains an array of light emitters and detectors that can be placed over key spots on an infant’s head. Light travels harmlessly into the baby’s brain and bounces out, producing readings that are translated through complex mathematical algorithms into an image.
These images should be able to tell doctors where there is brain damage or trauma, Culver said. The device also could be used to monitor ongoing changes in the brain, to gauge the effectiveness of treatments as they are administered, or to watch for damage during a surgery or other procedure.
While technology for monitoring pulse, blood pressure and other vital systems has been commonplace for years, “the brain is one area (doctors) know the least about, but it’s also among the most important,” Culver said.
The technology has limits — it cannot produce accurate readings from deep within the body, even to the level of reaching far into an adult brain. But researchers are excited by its ability to generate an image from light, rather than using harmful radiation.
Cephalogics is focused on use in premature infants because there is demand from physicians and a large potential market, Culver said.
“If you look at the (neonatal intensive care units), which there are an awful lot of — and they have an awful lot of beds — and you look at the amount of money they spend” on medical devices, that could translate into a significant business opportunity, he said.
Culver and his two-person team have developed a lab-scale prototype device. But unlike the clinical model they will work on over the next year, this early model does not give real-time analysis or images, and it is not small enough to use at a baby’s bedside.
“I’m confident the technology can do what it needs to do,” he said. But it needs to happen fast enough to meet market demand and match up with clinical use.
rmelcer@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8394
Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.