“A second observer to help pathologists make faster and more accurate diagnoses for timely patient’s treatment”
Patent Status
SUBMITTED
Priority Number
102018000005848
Priority Data
28/06/2018
License
ITALY
Market
According to Frost&Sullivan report, from 2016 to 2021, the Digital Pathology software market is increasing of 130% in the whole world, 140% in USA and 90% in EU. Moreover, according to ”Digital Pathology Market to 2025 – Global Analysis and Forecasts by Product” and other market reports, this trend will be repeated at least until the 2025: the global digital pathology market is projected to reach $ 1,139 million by 2025 from $ 613 million in 2020, at a CAGR of 13.2% during the forecast period.
The growth of the Digital Pathology software market is a consequence of increasing of WSI – Whole Slide Imaging System, the classic slide becomes digital. Starting from digital imaging is possible to start using quantitative software to analyze images. This is due to the need of including new technologies in the Anatomical Pathology sector, neglected for years in favor of radiology sector and strongly labor intensive.
Problem
Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally. In 2018, over 18.1 M new cancer cases were diagnosed worldwide, these, according to the Global Cancer Observatory, will be more than 29.5 M in 2040, an increase of about 60% in just over 20 years.
In the coming years, there will be a sharp drop in specialists, and therefore also in pathologists, in Italy and worldwide. In Italy, according to FIASO, this will lead to having about 20,000 fewer doctors in eight years, about 18% less than the number of specialists in 2017. The same trend can be found in the USA where, according to the AAMC, out of about 13,000 specialists in pathological anatomy and clinical pathology, about 65%, are over 55 years old.
Current Technology Limits
In the Digital Pathology industry, there are lots of Multinational companies such as Philips, Leica and Roche who, in addition to dividing the hardware market, have entered in the software market through acquisitions of innovative start-ups. VisioPharm must also be added to these giants.
Talking on small enterprise or Startups, we can find PathAI (American Start up), Indica Labs (New mexico), AIforia (Finland), and others.
However, our approaches are different from the others, we want to integrate new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine and Deep Learning in a different and innovative way. This will help us to obtain future certifications needed. Moreover, unlike other players, our tools will be developed in order to be integrated and usable with different image (coming from different scanner), and our solution will be modular: starting from the same algorithms/patents we are able to develop the Aequip tools for different tissues.
Killer Application
Stain Normalization: this tool is able to normalize and re-stain digitally a physical slide with 2 clicks. It will help the pathologists on their work providing a new digital image according to their own preferred intensity;
Tumor Detection: this tool is able to detect and recognize the cancer tissue on a digital slide. In this way, Aequip can be employed as a pre-screening stage and, as a result, the pathologists will analyze only potential cancerous slides. This is very important on Pathology labs because a lot of daily pathologist work is used on negative slides. For example, more than 60% of prostate slides and more than 70% of breast slides are negative;
Tumor Quantitative Analysis: The tool is able to quantify the tumor aggression through the extraction of specified parameters. Nowadays, pathologists use their eyes (by microscope) to extract these parameters requested for diagnosis, consequently, they are qualitative and approximates. This variability will be part of the therapy prescribed to the patients.
Our Technology and Solutions
Aequip is a Startup and Spin off of the Politecnico di Torino founded in 2020. The Aequip’s industry is the medical branch, in particular the Digital Pathology. The Digital Pathology allows to study, through digital images obtained from slides, the human diseases by microscopic examination of tissues.
Digital image analysis systems are undergoing a change in technological paradigm due to the use of innovative solutions. This is especially found in Digital Pathology, a sector that is developing and growing in recent years. Aequip wants to enter in this process, exploiting all the power of existing calculators, to provide precise, detailed and solid results over time, creating a standard of quantification within the Pathological Anatomy. This will increase the quality of diagnostics and speed up the entire medical workflow that today, due to the countless cases to be analyzed, has its bottleneck in pathologists.
Advantages
The systems developed by Aequip use disruptive innovations such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine and Deep Learning, solutions that if used correctly can create the right mix to establish themselves in this sector. Aequip is able to automatically extract all the useful and quantitative parameters from digitized histological slides. These algorithms are designed to support the pathologist during the diagnostic process, providing precise, detailed and solid results over time, allowing to speed up the workflow and reducing the human error.
TRL
Il team
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