EchoVision: Real-Time Ultrasound Image Quality Enhancement and Standard View Capture Advisor

1. Problem or Opportunity

2019 has witnessed the faster adoption of portable point of care ultrasound (POCUS) in cardiac and critical care. Medical school have emphasized the incorporation of POCUS into curriculum. Yet the image quality produced by POCUS is usually subpar compared to their workstation counterparts. Moreover, the images obtained by novice users may suffer from suboptimal quality and inconsistency, affecting the diagnostic values of the images.

2. Product or Service Concept

Motivated by above problems, CardioSquare developed EchoVision, a software to improve ultrasound image quality, as well as to provide guidance in how to acquire standard views. The software can be integrated into POCUS machines.

3. Medical Significance

In echocardiography, our image enhancement solution reduces speckles and increases resolution, yielding clinical advantages with smoother endocardium and clearer delineation of valve. It is estimated, accuracy in parameters, such as ejection faction, could be improved.

Our guidance tool helps to reduce the duration to train novice users, making it easier for novice users to adopt POCUS.

4. Target Markets

Several companies have announced new POCUS. Our plan is to sign software as a service deal with them. Guidance tools may also be adopted by medical schools directly.

Since we were awarded Top 3 by Echovation at American Society of Echocardiography, we have signed one letter of intent, and gained raw data access from another vendor.

5. Team

Key team members (Total 5 members now)

CMO: Dr. Chi-Ming Chow (UToronto Prof.), director of echo lab at St. Michael’s hospital, former president of Canadian Society of Echocardiography.

CTO: Dr. Oleg Michailovich (UWaterloo Prof. ,Ph.D from Technion), authored several milestone papers in ultrasound image processing.

CEO: Dr. Qinghua Shen (NextAI, Ph.D from Uwaterloo, former Apple Intern), Top 10 in estimation accuracy in IEEE SigCup 2016.