About our project
About 1 in 4 breast cancer lesions are missed by standard mammography.
Living Discoveries has designed a computer system which can improve the detection rate of lesions and tumors dramatically. Our studies have shown that our Digital Mammographer catches over 90% of breast cancers (with a false positive rate of only 4%). When breast cancer is caught at an early-stage, the chance of survival greatly increases. This means that our software can help in saving hundreds, or even thousands of lives.
And, breast cancer is just the beginning. We’re also applying this technology to diagnose other types of cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and even Alzheimer’s Disease. But we need your help to make this all happen!
Some Important Facts:
- Up to 25% of breast cancer lesions are missed by mammography.
- 5-year survival rate of stage-I breast cancer is 100% while survival rate of stage-IV breast cancer is 20%.
- Estimated treatment cost in Stage-0 is $21,000 as compared to $50,000 for Stage IV treatment cost. Additional radiologists for double reads cost ~$362,000/year.
- There is a clinical need to develop an efficient screening process that reduces the number of false negatives during early breast cancer diagnosis.
Catching breast cancer sooner will save more lives.
Using Digital Mammographer is really simple!
Here’s how it works:
1. You or your doctor uploads the mammogram image to our website.
2. About one minute later, the image is returned along with a diagnosis (normal/abnormal) and suspicious areas outlined in red.
3. Behind the scenes, a plethora of advanced algorithms are running to detect and classify shapes, lines, gray level patterns, textures, density distribution, and pixel intensity clusters in the image.
Watch our full demo here
Clinical proof:
We’ve published a journal article in Algorithms, which demonstrates and validates one of the many approaches we have used in the past to highlight suspicious regions in a mammogram.
Even without using the other advanced algorithms that are present in our product, that approach alone yielded over 80% diagnostic accuracy for breast cancer on a 150 image dataset. We are also in the process of establishing a collaboration with a Radiologist at the University of Minnesota.
We’ve also tested our prototype on above 2000 images from the University of Southern Florida’s Digital Database for Screening Mammography. The results showed that our system caught over 90% of breast cancers.
| Examples of Lesions Our Prototype Detected |
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Radiologist-highlighted areas are in yellow, our program’s results are in red.
Though the second mammogram may seem to contain a false positive, this was actually revealed to be multicentric disease which the program identified but the clinician did not.
FDA Status:
We plan to submit a 510k application with the FDA to market our product in the United States by Dec 2013. We are hoping to raise additional funding for this goal in the subsequent months.
How We Help Patients:
Early detection is the key in breast cancer to a better clinical outcome. By detecting suspicious areas quickly and allowing your doctor to better see any abnormalities, your odds of survival will be higher.
It also means that your treatment will be more likely to spare healthy tissue, increasing the chance that you may be suitable for a lumpectomy instead of a mastectomy.
How We Help Doctors:
- By reducing the noise and sharpening the images, you will be better able to evaluate your radiographs, and potentially find and treat breast cancer earlier, with an improved outcome for your patients.
- This system works with all current systems that you may be using, and no additional equipment purchase is required by your practice. You will now be able to provide the same CAD service as major institutions, who have invested a quarter of a million dollars or more for this technology. Your investment will be use based, and your interface will be cloud and web based.
- Any clinical correlation that you or other practitioners provide will automatically improve the system for everyone. As a result, you will effortlessly gain better and better diagnostic accuracy over time.
How We Help Hospitals and Institutions:
Our system is cloud based and does not require any additional equipment expenditures, Your hospital can boast that is is using this new CAD technology and draw in more mammogram patients, competing with any local facilities that do not offer this technology to the patient.
How We Help Our Partners:
- Estimated treatment cost in Stage-0 Breast Cancer is $21,000 as compared to $50,000 for Stage IV treatment cost. An additional radiologist for a double read costs ~$362,000/year.
- Our system can save reimbursements not only by saving on detection costs, but also by saving on treatment costs. We can also reduce insurance liabilities due to misdiagnosis, and can earn you a reputation on the forefront of patient survival and cutting edge diagnostic research.
- We have cross-disciplinary expertise in both artificial intelligence and medicine, a powerful combination, and can provide useful insight into your clinical research studies.
How We Will Spend Your Contributions:
Our goal through this fundraising is $25,000 of which:
- $10,000 would be spent towards product development, in particular scaling and refining our prototype into the beginnings of a final product which we can begin deploying in clinics
- $15,000 would be spent towards filing a regular patent as a follow up to our provisional patent to protect our IP.
STRETCH GOALS:
$15000 – This is the amount needed for us to secure a full patent on our invention, which will greatly assist our future fundraising. As a Thank You, we will acknowledge everyone who contributes over $100 in our pitch deck and release it to the public at the end of our round.
$25000 – This is the minimum amount needed for us to develop the final product. As a Thank You, everyone in the continental US will get free shipping!
Who We Are: The Two Founders
Michael Barnathan started programming in childhood and now uses his skills in computer science and AI to make medicine more intelligent.
Ramji Venkatasubramanian works on new product development and commercialization of medical devices. In addition to clinical and regulatory knowledge, he brings the expertise required to take our concept to commercialization.
Find Us & Talk to Us:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/livingdiscoveries
We’re very excited to share this lifesaving innovation with the community, and hope that you’ll help us create a healthier world for everyone!
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Have a question?
If the info above does not help, you can ask the project creator directly.
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