ContextVision, a medical technology software company specializing in image analysis and artificial intelligence, has announced the signing of an agreement which opens up for several new research projects within digital pathology, based on cleaned and structured data from a large biobank, which contains more than six million human specimens, including blood, tissue and associated clinical data. Pathology slides from cancer patients will now be digitalized and a database will be developed for defined patient cohorts.
Founded in 1983, based in Stockholm, Sweden, ContextVision is the global market leader within image enhancement and is a software partner to leading medical imaging manufacturers all over the world. Its cutting-edge technology helps doctors accurately interpret medical images, a crucial foundation for better diagnosis and treatment.
The company is significantly investing in R&D to develop new applications of the latest artificial intelligence technologies and expanding into the growing digital pathology market. The release of its first product, supporting the diagnosis of prostate cancer, is planned in the near future.
Unique big data cohorts of pathology images and related clinical data will be extracted from the biobank, and advanced deep learning technology will be applied to generate new medical insights that will help improve treatment decisions for individual cancer patients.
ContextVision will have exclusive rights to the scanning cohort and access to anonymized associated clinical data – with cleared and structured histopathological descriptions, diagnosis and outcome data – for the defined patient cohorts and all commercial rights from output based on the data.
The agreement gives ContextVision an opportunity to create AI-based decision support tools that will help doctors make more accurate treatment decisions. Having access to very large amounts of data offers a unique opportunity for ContextVision as it allows the development of AI based decision support tools by using weakly supervised or semi-supervised deep learning technology.
“We are really looking forward to explore the commercial potential of applying deep learning technology to generate new predictive decision support tools.” … “It is our ambition to develop new decision support tools that will help doctors better differentiate between patients needing treatment from those that don’t.” … “The technology means that the neural network will find key features by itself rather than humans instructing the neural network what to look for.” … “With this, algorithms detecting new predictive features can be of great use for the doctors treating cancer patients.”- Anita Tollstadius, CEO of ContextVision
Sources
