Noninvasive diagnostic test to guide heart disease treatment secures $75M

A cardiovascular diagnostic company hoping to redefine the standard for how heart disease is diagnosed […]

A cardiovascular diagnostic company hoping to redefine the standard for how heart disease is diagnosed has secured nearly $75 million for its noninvasive fractional flow reserve/computed tomography test.

Whereas fractional flow reserve, the standard for determining if patients with coronary artery disease require treatment, is measured during an invasive procedure that requires placing a guide wire directly into the patient’s coronary artery, HeartFlow Inc.’s approach gathers information about blood flow in coronary arteries noninvasively using high-performance computing and CT scan data. Results of the test are transmitted through a secure web interface and presented in the form of an interactive report to help guide physicians in making diagnostic decisions.

In initial clinical tests, the FFRCT technology demonstrated significant improvements in diagnostic accuracy over other noninvasive technologies, according to HeartFlow’s website. The company is currently recruiting participants for a multicenter clinical trial.

Cardiovascular imaging and diagnostics represents a huge global market opportunity, but there is also lots of competition in other techniques that evaluate narrowed coronary arteries, including coronary angiography, intravascular ultrasound and CT coronarography. Boston Scientific, for example, just had a new FFR/optical coherence tomography diagnostic tool cleared in Europe last summer.

The Redwood City, California company was formed in 2007 by a group of Stanford University professors under the name Cardiovascular Stimulation Inc.

CEO and Chairman John Stevens did not return a call.

Shares0
Shares0