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What IQ-AI does:
IQ-AI Limited (LON:IQAI) is the company formerly known as Flying Brands. The name change reflected its aspiration of becoming a leader in the field of medical imaging diagnostics. It currently comprises two businesses – Stone Checker Software and Imaging Biometrics (IB).
StoneChecker
This predictive, diagnostic software product helps urologists determine whether a kidney stone will disintegrate under a vibration process called lithotripsy. This capability becomes important in determining whether to subject patients to multiple rounds of lithotripsy or send them straight to surgery. Its products are now sold in the USA, UK, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Greece and South Korea. The business has been put up for sale to free up resources for the company’s medical imaging products.
Despite previous plans to sell the business, the company has since said it will retain StoneChecker and is now preparing to release version 2.0 of the software in early Q4 2020.
Imaging Biometrics
IB provides advanced imaging software used by cancer hospitals and universities in the US such as the Mayo Clinic and Stanford University Medical Centre. One application is commercialising aids in the detection and staging of chronic liver disease, while another “leverages deep learning algorithms” for breast cancer screening.
Its software could become part of the consensus methodology for brain tumour diagnosis and treatment, according to an award-winning research article published in March.
How it is doing
In November, leading US cancer centre Montgomery Cancer Center in Alabama bought IQ-AI’s Imaging Biometrics subsidiary’s IB Clinic product.
It also received US regulatory clearance for a virtual biopsy that can help assess chronic liver disease.
Imaging Biometrics has the global rights to manufacture, market, and distribute the technology, which presents a new way to analyse CT scans for conditions including liver inflammation, early fibrosis, advanced fibrosis, and cirrhosis.
Over 2bn people worldwide have some form of chronic liver disease that currently requires painful liver biopsies that can cost anywhere up to US$3,000 a time and are prone to errors that may result in misdiagnosis.
European regulatory sign-off for LSN in the form of a CE Mark is expected later this quarter.
In October it also advanced its contrast-free imaging project to the next stage, validation testing, which includes subjecting the Artificial Intelligence model to a large and varied set of data, and statistically comparing the model’s output to “ground truth”, or actual, images acquired using contrast.
Inflexion points
- Marketing of LSN following US approval
- More contracts from clinics in US, EU
- Advancement with contrast-free imaging project
Blue sky
All the company’s products are based upon digitising information from medical imaging equipment on a voxel-wise basis – a voxel being the three-dimensional (3D) equivalent of a pixel (i.e. a point on a 3D grid).
In the technology IQ-AI is developing, each individual voxel is examined and compared to surrounding voxels, which is often the first step in identifying diseased or compromised tissue.
IQ-AI remains committed to its product development program, which has already produced the Auto-Segmentation, Gadolinium-Free and AI Programs, and is convinced additional products will be generated in future.
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