NIRAMAI Solutions: A Novel Breast Cancer Screening Solution

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in women today. According to WHO, one in every 12 women have the risk of a potential breast abnormality. Indian women have only about 50% chance of survival. Early diagnosis is very critical to decrease mortality rates.

NIRAMAI is developing novel software to detect breast cancer at a much earlier stage than traditional methods or self-examination. The solution is a low cost, accurate, automated, portable cancer screening tool that can be operated by a simple clinician. Unlike mammography, its imaging method is radiation free, non-touch, not painful and works for women of all ages. The core technology of the company’s solution is an artificial intelligence led diagnostic platform that uses patented thermal image processing and machine learning algorithms for reliable and accurate breast cancer screening. This unique solution can be used as a cancer diagnosis test in hospitals, used for regular preventive health check-ups, and also for large scale screening in rural and semi-urban areas. NIRAMAI provides complete hardware-software solution for breast cancer screening in three modes. (a) Sturdy, compact screening device with cloud processing for specialty hospitals (b) Low-cost, handheld device with real-time cloud-based diagnostics for independent medical practitioners (c) A portable solution for large-scale screenings.

Their Solutions

Thermalytix

The core of NIRAMAI solution is Thermalytix, a computer aided diagnostic engine that is powered by Artificial Intelligence. The solution uses a high resolution thermal sensing device and a cloud hosted analytics solution for analysing the thermal images. The SaaS solution uses big data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning for reliable, early and accurate breast cancer screening. The innovative methods used in NIRAMAI’s solutions have led to multiple US patents. The company also uses an algorithm that has been peer-reviewed in international scientific conferences.

Its cancer screening tool, SMILE, has been tested on more than 4000 women in 12 hospitals/diagnostic center as well as screening camps. 3 clinical trials, comparing Thermalytix with current standard of care, have been published in peer reviewed conference/journals. The results from these clinical trials indicate very high accuracy of Thermalytix that is comparable and sometimes better that Mammography.

Below is a summary of the results from trials done so far:

• Over 90% sensitivity in all trials
• 27% higher accuracy than Mammography (most of the additional cancers detected were in dense breasts)
• 70%  higher positive predictive value than Visual interpretation of Thermography (results from traditional thermography are very subjective and error prone)
• Thermalytix is effective in 32% more patients walking into a hospital with pain or discomfort in their breasts (as it works for younger women/dense breast women)
• Was able to detect cancer lesions as small as 4 mm with no palpable lumps.

SMILE TOOL

SMILE (Software with Machine Intelligence for Life Enhancement) is a web interface for the NIRAMAI certified technician to upload demography information about the patient along with her thermal images. The information is processed using their patented technology, Thermalytix, to analyse the patient’s breast health condition. The solution automatically generates a report listing certain unique parameters obtained from patient thermal images and also recommends a breast health score. Customers can configure their own expert Radiologist for their center for report certification. They can optionally, avail expert opinion from NIRAMAI panel of certified Radiologists for an additional price.

Functionalities of SMILE:

• A simple web based link for the user to access the tool.
• A separate interface for expert Radiologist to view the patient information.
• Automated report generation with unique parameters generated by Thermalytix.
• Automated cropping for breast region segmentation.
• Automated marking of potential abnormalities in breast images.
• Generation of 3-page detailed report with quantitative metrics from analyzing thermal images.
• Temperature display on hovering over the image.
• Certification from an experienced Radiologist.

Meet the CEO, Geetha Manjunath

Dr. Geetha Manjunath is the Founder, CEO and CTO of NIRAMAI. She has over 25 years of experience in IT research and has led many innovative projects in Healthcare and Transportation, especially catering to Emerging Market needs. Until end of 2016, she was a Lab Director heading Data Analytics Research in Xerox India. Prior to that, she was a Principal Research Scientist at Hewlett Packard Laboratories for 17 years, and a member of the C-DAC team which built the first commercial supercomputer from India. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Science and management education from Kellogg’s School of Management Chicago. Geetha has won much international and national recognition for her innovations and entrepreneurial work. She was awarded the Computer Society of India Gold Medal in 1991 and TRShamanna State Award from Karnataka in 1989. She was named as one of the top 50 NASCCOM IT Innovators in 2009. Among several accolades from Hewlett Packard, her outstanding innovation called SiteOnMobile was tagged as a “HP Legend”. She was also the winner of 2010 MIT Tech Review Grand Challenges for Technologists in Healthcare category.

“Our imaging method is radiation free, non-touch, not painful and works for women of all ages.”