Imbio, Inc. announced today that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, a public body of the Department of Health in England providing evidence-based technology recommendations by independent committees, released their Medtech Innovation Briefing titled: “Lung texture analysis for measuring interstitial lung diseases.” The MIB states that Imbio’s Lung Texture Analysis™ (LTA) algorithm could be an effective addition to standard care in assessing interstitial lung disease.
The fully-automated Lung Texture Analysis™ algorithm applies advanced computer vision to transform a standard medical imaging chest CT into a detailed map and quantification of the lung textures that are key to identifying interstitial lung diseases and other fibrotic conditions. LTA provides an intuitive texture overlay on the patient scan to highlight abnormalities and increase diagnostic confidence, and includes a detailed physician report of each patient analysis. LTA is based upon technology known as CALIPER in multiple peer-reviewed publications.
The Briefing included a description of the LTA technology, how it is used, its potential patient and system impact, along with a review of relevant published evidence and likely costs of using the technology. Clinical experts also provided comments including:
- The improved accuracy of diagnosis and reduction in individual variation between CT reporting could provide huge benefits for people.
- Improved diagnostic accuracy would allow earlier treatment, potentially improving quality of life and survival in people with interstitial lung disease.
- LTA may help to standardise the level of reporting through objective quantification of CT scans in people with interstitial lung disease.
Dr. Graham Robinson, President of the British Society of Thoracic Imaging and co-founder of Heart & Lung Imaging Ltd explains, “At the Royal United Hospital in Bath, UK and at Heart & Lung Imaging Ltd (www.heartlunghealth.com) we have been using Imbio’s LTA for both routine clinical practice and research activity for some time. It is an exciting, intuitive and genuinely useful product in the ILD space.”
“Imbio is pleased to receive support for the use of Lung Texture Analysis™ from a world-renowned source of clinical expertise such as NICE,” said Dave Hannes, CEO at Imbio. “This briefing is a great milestone for the technology and for the centers that could benefit from the added value of providing a more effective patient care path due to improved diagnostic accuracy that LTA can provide.”
