Corsmed, a Swedish Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) software company, announced it has secured $3.5 million in seed funding, bringing the total investment in the company to $10 million. The funding round was co-led by Luminar Ventures and Big Pi Ventures, with participation from previous investors.
The company is renowned for its educational MRI simulation platform. This latest funding round will see Corsmed bring its fast MRI scanning technology out of stealth and put it into clinical use.
Launching in 2019 under the leadership of co-founders Erik Jacobsson (CEO) and Christos Xanthis (CTO), and CSO Athanasios Polimeridis, Corsmed currently offers a true-to-life MRI simulator used by acclaimed cancer hospitals and research institutions like The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, CNI College, and Gurnick Academy to train, upskill, and assess students and medical staff. So far, more than 80,000 hours of real MRI scanner time has been run on the Corsmed simulator, saving institutions precious time on real scanners that cost an average of $1,325 to run for less than an hour.
Corsmed will use this latest funding to commercialize its clinical MRI scanning technology, built on the same digital twin technologies as its successful MRI simulator platform. And this new software will drastically shift the clinical norm of MRI scan speeds by reducing MRI scan durations from an average of 45 minutes to a mere 2-3 minutes. The company plans to file for submission with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and ensure the software is compliant with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Despite being one of the safest imaging methods that provide detailed health insights, MRI has been prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to deploy at the scale needed for truly preventive healthcare.
Corsmed’s new software remedies this strain by expediting the scanning process drastically from an average of 45 minutes to just 2-3 minutes. And this speed is currently unparalleled even at the cutting edge of MRI innovation. New AI-based software solutions from incumbent players tend to deliver 20-40% faster scans. And Corsmed’s software can generate several high-resolution full 3D brain contrasts in three minutes, 10x faster than the current clinical norm.
Unlike traditional and qualitative MRIs that rely on subjective interpretation by radiologists, Corsmed’s software produces quantitative MRI scans, with each pixel representing measurable data that can be compared across different patients and timeframes. And by reducing the cost and time of advanced medical imaging, Corsmed turns high-precision health tracking from an expensive privilege into an accessible healthcare tool for the broader population.
KEY QUOTES:
“Until we can make MRI regularly accessible for everyone, we’ll continue to see preventable mortality pile up. We currently live in a sick-care, rather than a healthcare, system. Corsmed aims to change this. Imagine a world where routine, whole-body quantitative scans can detect cancer and other life-threatening diseases at their earliest stages, giving everyone a fair shot at a long and healthy life. This is the future we’re building toward.”
- Erik Jacobsson, CEO of Corsmed
“To democratise MRI scans is a cornerstone in the creation of preventive healthcare. We estimate that Corsmed can save tens of thousands of lives per day by enabling the detection of life-threatening conditions 10x cheaper than today. Together with AI-enabled image processing, this is an area that will see exponential improvements in the next coming years and Corsmed’s qMR technology will be driving that change and this industry.”
- Magnus Bergman, co-founding Partner at Luminar Ventures
“Corsmed has the potential to fundamentally change healthcare worldwide. The team has developed a technology that can truly unlock preventative and personalized health. We are impressed with what they have achieved and are excited to join their journey.”
- Nick Kalliagkopoulos, Partner at Big Pi Ventures
“Corsmed has elevated the standard of the MRI training programs at UCLH, ensuring that both staff and patients benefit from a safer, more effective imaging process. By providing staff with hands-on, simulator-based training, they gain a deeper understanding of MRI protocols and techniques, reducing errors and enhancing their confidence before they work directly with patients.”
- Noyal Mathew, MRI Practice Educator and Clinical Simulations Facilitator at the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
“Corsmed has made it much easier to teach MR radiographers the challenging concepts of MR physics by guiding them through the effect of imaging parameter changes in real-time in a relaxed environment without clinical pressures. Over 90 MR radiographers across North West England have attended and reported significant benefit to their knowledge and understanding of MR physics.”
- Guy Drabble, Clinical Scientist at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust MR Physics Group
