What excites us most is the possibility of liberating such diagnostic tools from the requirements of the specialization for operation and interpretation — issues that would remain unaddressed even if we had the ability magically to drop MR scanners into every parcel of land on Earth.

The time is right, maybe even overdue, for us to take advantage of the state of the science in order to transform this segment of healthcare. Biomedical sciences have advanced in extraordinary ways, but we have allowed an untenable and frankly disgraceful disparity in care access to crystallize in the global health landscape. So you can hopefully see that the ethos of our work and the technology is nothing less than a full-bore democratization of advanced and intelligent diagnostic tools.


HCB News: Could microwaves have other diagnostic applications?
SD and LA: We imagine that an expanded array of hardware could be coupled to an expanded armament of algorithms each intended for dedicated purposes beyond just stroke. There are certainly many other high-acuity conditions that would benefit from early detection and diagnosis.

Two that immediately come to mind are traumatic brain injury/concussions and hydrocephalus, a condition in which the fluid spaces of the brain expand to dangerous levels. Here again, many such conditions concentrate in certain economically disadvantaged areas of the world, where a lack of imaging is already a pervasive concern.

We’ve generally preferred not to delimit any strict set of tasks because we see boundless opportunities for what we believe is a new class of imaging and diagnostic instruments.

HCB News: What are the next steps for bringing this scanner to healthcare providers?
SD and LA: We’re at the precipice of clinical subject scanning in patients with neurologic disease, which we hope to initiate with the incredible support offered by NYU Langone in the coming weeks or months.

Larger-scale progress is going to require that we upscale engineering and production of the instrumentation, which will involve some further fine-tuning once we arrive at a design freeze. We’re optimistic that we can rapidly upscale production, given our level of control over the design and engineering from stem to stern.

We’re hoping to secure the necessary funding from varying sources so that we can see this reach fruition, and hopefully after a strong showing in the clinical trial domain, we would naturally apply our efforts fully toward regulatory approval and full commercialization. There’s a certain eagerness and excitement that comes with sitting on something that feels revolutionary and disruptive.

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