Jiangsu Yucheng Investment provides risk capital to Dutch PA Imaging. This company is a spin-off company of University Twente, which was the first ever to report experimental clinical results with photo-acoustic mammography. Photo-acoustic imaging, the most promising and fastest growing biomedical imaging technique of the last decade, uses light as excitation energy, but rather than detecting light, ultrasound is detected to study the optical absorption contrast. It uses very short powerful but harmless (near-) infrared laser light pulses to excite hemoglobin, resulting in a localized increase in pressure due to thermo-elastic expansion of blood vessels. This pressure relaxes with the emission of pressure transients, with frequencies in the ultrasound range. Ultrasensitive transducers register these tiny ultrasound waves from which a truly 3D image of the blood vessels in the breast can be constructed, including tumor vascularization.
On 20 January 2020 Yucheng and PA Imaging closed the transaction regarding a strategic minority interest. PA Imaging will use the investment resources to validate its product in a cross-over clinical study with the ultimate aim to obtain CE marking. The parties are further preparing the establishment of a Chinese Joint Venture from which the Chinese market will be addressed and which will contribute to PA Imaging’s goal of obtaining a competitive cost price for its systems comparable to the current cost price of a high-end x-ray computed tomography system.
Development track record in photo-acoustic mammography
Now developing a third generation system, PA Imaging is combining its photo-acoustic technology to proprietary 3D ultrasonography partly based on a patent family acquired from University Twente. The ultrasound mode delivers data to fine-tune the photo-acoustic imaging and provides additional visualization of anatomical features, thereby building on PA Imaging’s technical and clinical learnings which it obtained in close co-operation with scientists from University Twente and mamma-radiologists from Medisch Spectrum Twente. PA Imaging is on track to go beyond the minimally required 5 cm image depth target which ensures that 90% of the global female population can be investigated with this method.
Women-friendly superior method for both screening and diagnosis
Photo-acoustic mammography does not need any contract agent, is painless, has no limits on time intervals between screening or diagnosis and is available to virtually all women irrespective of their age. It also claims to produce significantly less false positive results compared to today’s methods, thereby significantly reducing health care costs and avoiding the burden of unnecessary biopsies.