Schlieren ZH – The start-up promoter Venture Kick is supporting IMAI from Schlieren with 150,000 Swiss francs. The money will be used to optimize the hardware prototype developed by the start-up for image analysis in cancer diagnosis.
The medtech start-up IMAI has received an investment of 150,000 Swiss francs from Venture Kick in Schlieren to bring pathology into the digital 3D world. According to a press release, the spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich(ETH) aims to revolutionize cancer diagnosis by reducing information loss, false-negative results and high healthcare costs.
The IMAI team, led by co-founders Francesca Catto (CEO), Robert Axelrod (COO) and Sascha Brun (CTO), has developed an automated platform that enables rapid tissue processing, labeling for cancer detection and advanced software for cell counting, cancer mass measurement and 3D visualization.
Cancer causes millions of deaths every year. In the conventional method for detecting cancer, thin tissue sections are examined. Since only a small part of the tissue is analyzed, there is a high risk of false-negative results. With its novel approach combining biomedicine and mechanical engineering, IMAI aims to enable physicians to use digital and 3D histopathology and increase diagnostic accuracy.
IMAI will use the 150,000 Swiss francs from Venture Kick to expand the capabilities of the hardware prototype, acquire customers, further validate the business model and optimize the artificial intelligence functions for the image analysis software, according to the press release. In the first phase, IMAI plans to address a total of 125 biomedical research laboratories worldwide by 2028.
The global market for histology and cytology is estimated at 16 billion dollars, with a projected growth of 15 percent annually from 2023 to 2030. ce/gba