Medical imaging is a broad term that encompasses several distinct technologies. After working on AI-powered tools to enhance X-rays and mammographies, French startup Gleamer now aims to tackle magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Instead of starting from scratch, Gleamer acquired a startup that has already been working on AI-powered MRI analysis, Caerus Medical, and is merging with Pixyl.
Gleamer is part of the second wave of startups trying to improve medical imaging using artificial intelligence. Several tech founders created startups around this topic in 2014 or 2015. While most of them went nowhere, there has been some consolidation in the space. For instance, Zebra Medical Vision and Arterys were both acquired by Nanox and Tempus, respectively.
Founded in 2017, Gleamer has been building an AI assistant for radiologists, a sort of copilot for medical imaging. With Gleamer, radiologists can theoretically improve the diagnostic accuracy when interpreting medical images.
The startup has already persuaded 2,000 institutions across 45 countries to use its software solution. Overall, Gleamer has processed 35 million examinations. The company has received CE and FDA certifications for its bone trauma interpretation product. In Europe, it also offers products specifically focused on chest X-rays, orthopedic, and bone age measurements with CE certification.
“Unfortunately, the one-size-fits-all approach to radiology doesn’t work,” Gleamer co-founder and CEO Christian Allouche told TechCrunch. “It’s very complicated to have a large model that covers all medical imaging and delivers the level of performance expected by doctors.”
That’s why the company created small internal teams focused on mammographies and CT scans. “Three weeks ago we released our mammography product, which we have been working on for 18 months,” Allouche said. It’s based on a proprietary AI model that has been trained on 1.5 million mammographies.
“We have a partnership with Jean Zay, the French government’s GPU cluster,” Allouche said. The company is also working on CT scans for cancers.
But what about MRI? “MRI is a different technological space,” Allouche said. “You have a lot of tasks in MRI. It's not just detection; you've got segmentation, you've got detection, you've got characterization, classification, multi-sequence imaging.”
That’s why Gleamer is acquiring a small startup (Caerus Medical) and merging with a larger one (Pixyl) to move faster. These two companies have been working in this space for several years. Gleamer isn’t disclosing the terms of the deals.