Company Details
Name: Canon Medical Research Europe Ltd
Date Founded: 1994
Sector: Life Sciences/Medical Imaging
Key Products/Services: R&D services company, we make medical imaging technology which is integrated and sold through our Japanese parent company, Canon Medical Systems.
Website URL: www.research.eu.medical.canon
Executive Summary
We make novel technology for the visualisation and interpretation of medical images targeting the radiology market.
We have 30 years’ experience in this area of innovation and have amassed a substantial patent portfolio with our technology now adopted within almost all of Canon Medical’s scanners that are sold and installed throughout the world. We innovate on our own and in partnership with leading academics and clinicians.
Recently our work has become more focused on exploiting AI and we are recognised as Canon Medical’s global centre of excellence for diagnostic imaging AI.
The Challenge
The biggest challenge in our sector at the moment is patient throughput and hence departmental and hospital efficiency.
The ageing population means that there are ever increasing numbers of patients needing medical imaging exams and radiology departments are buckling under the strain of this new work.
If we can harness AI for clinical and non-clinical tasks, then we can improve the efficiency of radiology departments and make the workload of radiologists and radiographers more manageable and hence help to reduce waiting lists.
The Solution
We are now particularly focused on using AI within our scanner products to automate the scanning workflow and increase patient throughput.
This is an attractive market because the regulatory process to adopt AI in the scanning workflow is less burdensome than for full clinical AI that seeks to take on the role of diagnosis. In the recent past we have used our anatomic landmark detection technology to automate CT scanning delivering substantial benefits.
This technology is summarised under the INSTINX brand name on the following webpage - https://us.medical.canon/products/computed-tomography/instinx/.
The Impact
This technology is summarised under the INSTINX brand name on the following webpage - https://us.medical.canon/products/computed-tomography/instinx/.
Future Plans
Based on the commercial success of INSTINX, we now have a plan to develop more solutions to similar challenges across Canon Medical’s range of different scanner types.
This project has brought an additional £14m of investment to Canon Medical Research Europe, including a grant of £3.6m from Scottish Enterprise - https://www.scottish-enterprise-mediacentre.com/news/gbp-14million-project-from-canon-medical-research-in-edinburgh-plans-to-transform-medical-scans-with-ai-technology