Company Expanding One Click MRI™ Acquisition Software to Other Anatomies to Make MRIs Faster, Easier and Accessible to Everyone
CHICAGO, November 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — HeartVista, a pioneer and leader in automated MRI solutions, today announced that it has changed its name to Vista.ai as the company expands its focus on simplifying and improving medical exams. MRI for anatomy beyond the heart. A major academic medical center has already begun a clinical study to evaluate software for use with the prostate, and Vista.ai plans to initiate a similar study for musculoskeletal scanners in the near future. The company announced the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 108th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting 27 Nov-Dec 1, 2022in Chicago.
Vista.ai’s One Click MRI AI software solution facilitates the acquisition of high quality MRI images by automating the examination workflow. The company initially targeted cardiac MRI (CMR) as it is increasingly seen as the gold standard in cardiac diagnosticsI, yet the heart is a notoriously difficult and time-consuming anatomy to scan. Today, specially trained CMR technologists must perform an exam, and in the United States there is only one such technologist for every 20 MRI scanners.ii. The benefits of One Click MRI include simple, streamlined workflows and improved image consistency, so any MRI technologist can perform a cardiac scan in a regular mixed-use MRI time slot.
Vista.ai is showcasing One-Click MRI this week at AI Showcase Booth 5143 during RSNA show hours. In addition, Raymond Y. KwongMD, MPH, FACC, FSCMR Director of Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, will share case studies and research results using the software in his cardiac MRI clinical practice. Dr. Kwong will present to noon CST, Monday, November 28, 2022in the RSNA AI Theater (#5149).
Vista.ai developed One Click MRI using sophisticated and versatile AI-based algorithms that would be scalable for other types of MRI exams. The company chose prostate and spine as its next candidates because of the known challenges with these exams and the number of people who could benefit from them. In the United States, more than 10 million people undergo MRIs of the prostate and spine each year, representing 25% of the total MRI volume.iii
“Given the complexity of manual MRI and the millions of patients who could benefit from the scan, it was clear that applying our automation technology to the heart would create enormous market value. Despite the proven benefits of MRI in diagnosing a myriad of heart diseases, only 2% of current scans are CMRsiv yet 700,000 people die of heart disease each year in the United Statesv,” said Itamar Kandel, CEO of Vista.ai. “But we always knew that was just the beginning. Once we had the most complex anatomy tested, validated, adopted and approved by several elite medical institutions, we planned to deploy more tomies that would share the benefits we’ve shown for many heart conditions.”
Each year, clinicians in the United States perform nearly 40 million examsvi of the approximately 12,000 MRI machines installed in the country.viii But MRI scans are only beneficial if qualified medical professionals are available to perform the examination, which is a growing concern. In 2019, the United States had 20,000 fewer health professionals than needed to meet the needs of Americansviiia situation that has only worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The burnout of radiologists and technologists is at a breaking point, which has only worsened since the pandemic given the exodus of healthcare professionals, the backlog of imaging cases and the increasing incidence of COVID-related illnesses, such as myocarditis and pericarditis,” said Dr. Scott Flame, section chief of cardiovascular imaging at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. “To address staffing shortages – especially for difficult and time-consuming procedures like CMR – we urgently need automation technologies like Vista.ai’s One-Click MRI to ensure that patients, wherever they are, can receive the fastest possible diagnosis and treatment.”
About Vista.ai
Vista.ai harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to provide clinicians with a simple, cost-effective, and less stressful way to conduct MRI studies. The company’s FDA 510(k)-cleared One Click MRI™ software solution automates and dramatically simplifies a CMR exam, enabling a hospital to achieve higher scan throughput or initiate a CMR program cost-effectively. One Click MRI is available for use on Siemens Healthineers and GE Healthcare MRI scanners. Vista.ai is funded by Khosla Ventures and the National Institute of Health’s Small Business Innovation Research Program.
For more information, visit www.vista.ai. For Vista.ai’s RSNA Multimedia Toolkit, visit rsna.vporoom.com/HeartVista.
Media Contact:
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I Members of the editorial board and members of the joint ACC/AHA committee (2022). 2022 AHA/ACC/HFSA guideline for the management of heart failure. Heart Failure Diary, 28(5), e1–e167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cardfail.2022.02.010
ii Goldfarb JW, Weber J. Trends in cardiovascular MRI and CT scans in the US Medicare population from 2012 to 2017. Cardiothoracic Radiol Imaging. 2021 Feb 25;3(1):e200112. doi: 10.1148/ryct.2021200112.
iii Spine MRI Results and Medical Decision-Making: Consider All Your Options. Elite pain and health. https://epainhealth.com/spine-mri-get-options/. Accessed October 26, 2022.
iv Kalorama information. MRI: Global market analysis. November 2014.
v Cardiopathy. Heart disease facts. US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/facts.htm. Accessed October 24, 2022.
vi Conor Stewart. Number of MRI exams in the United States in 2016 and 2017, by facility type. Statistical. https://www.statista.com/statistics/820927/mri-scans-number-in-us-by-facility-type/. Accessed October 20, 2022.
viii Conor Stewart. Number of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) units in selected countries in 2019. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnetic-resonance-imaging-units-by-country/. Accessed October 20, 2022.
viii Association of American Medical Schools. The Complexities of Physician Supply and Demand: Projections from 2019 to 2034. June 2021. https://www.aamc.org/media/54681/download?attachment. Accessed October 20, 2022.
SOURCEHeartVista
