Business Wire06.09.21
Perimeter Medical Imaging AI Inc. said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted the company a Breakthrough Device Designation for its Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) Imaging System coupled with ImgAssist AI. Perimeter is advancing its proprietary, next-generation artificial intelligence technology and machine learning tools through clinical development under its ATLAS AI project, which is made possible, in part, by a $7.4 million grant awarded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), a leading state body funding cancer research.
Liz Munro, Perimeter’s co-founder and president of Canadian Operations commented, “Since company inception, the Perimeter team’s vision has been to develop imaging tools that have the potential to improve outcomes for clinicians, payors and most importantly – patients and their families. We are thrilled that FDA has granted Breakthrough Device Designation for our OCT Imaging System with ImgAssist AI, recognizing the potential of our device to offer significant advantages over existing alternatives for intra-operative evaluation of margins during breast cancer lumpectomy. We are grateful to the FDA review team for our productive interactions, as well as their timely review of this submission, and look forward to working with FDA through the final stages of development and clinical validation of this exciting product.”
The goal of the FDA’s Breakthrough Devices Program is to provide patients and health care providers with timely access to medical devices that provide for more effective treatment or diagnosis of life-threatening or irreversibly debilitating diseases or conditions by speeding up their development, assessment, and review. This designation allows for accelerated interactions with the FDA during product development and prioritized review of future regulatory submissions. In addition, a new Medicare policy program (Medicare Coverage of Innovative Technology, or MCIT) provides national Medicare coverage for up to four years for FDA-designated Breakthrough Devices upon market authorization, enabling more rapid utilization of new and innovative technologies for the Medicare population.
“Achieving a Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA further validates our strong belief that Perimeter’s novel OCT Imaging System combined with AI has the potential to be a transformative, disruptive new technology aimed at helping surgeons treat breast cancer," said Jeremy Sobotta, Perimeter’s CEO. "This Breakthrough Designation, combined with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) initiatives around MCIT, have the potential to provide a pathway to expediting adoption of this innovative technology. We are committed to providing physicians with ultra-high-resolution images of excised breast tissue ‘real-time’ during a surgical procedure combined with added artificial intelligence tools to help them interpret areas suspicious for cancer, with the goal of improving patient outcomes and lowering healthcare costs.”
Perimeter Medical Imaging AI is a Toronto-based company with U.S. headquarters in Dallas, Texas, that is developing and commercializing advanced imaging tools that allow surgeons, radiologists, and pathologists to visualize microscopic tissue structures during a clinical procedure. Perimeter’s Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) Imaging System provides clinicians with real-time, ultra-high-resolution, sub-surface image volumes of the margin (1-2 mm below the surface) of an excised tissue specimen. The ability to visualize microscopic tissue structures during a clinical procedure in addition to standard of care tissue assessment for decision making during the procedure has the potential to result in better long-term outcomes for patients and lower costs to the healthcare system. Perimeter’s OCT Imaging System is cleared by the FDA as an imaging tool in the evaluation of excised human tissue microstructure by providing two-dimensional, cross-sectional, real-time depth visualization, with image review manipulation software for identifying and annotating regions of interest.
Liz Munro, Perimeter’s co-founder and president of Canadian Operations commented, “Since company inception, the Perimeter team’s vision has been to develop imaging tools that have the potential to improve outcomes for clinicians, payors and most importantly – patients and their families. We are thrilled that FDA has granted Breakthrough Device Designation for our OCT Imaging System with ImgAssist AI, recognizing the potential of our device to offer significant advantages over existing alternatives for intra-operative evaluation of margins during breast cancer lumpectomy. We are grateful to the FDA review team for our productive interactions, as well as their timely review of this submission, and look forward to working with FDA through the final stages of development and clinical validation of this exciting product.”
The goal of the FDA’s Breakthrough Devices Program is to provide patients and health care providers with timely access to medical devices that provide for more effective treatment or diagnosis of life-threatening or irreversibly debilitating diseases or conditions by speeding up their development, assessment, and review. This designation allows for accelerated interactions with the FDA during product development and prioritized review of future regulatory submissions. In addition, a new Medicare policy program (Medicare Coverage of Innovative Technology, or MCIT) provides national Medicare coverage for up to four years for FDA-designated Breakthrough Devices upon market authorization, enabling more rapid utilization of new and innovative technologies for the Medicare population.
“Achieving a Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA further validates our strong belief that Perimeter’s novel OCT Imaging System combined with AI has the potential to be a transformative, disruptive new technology aimed at helping surgeons treat breast cancer," said Jeremy Sobotta, Perimeter’s CEO. "This Breakthrough Designation, combined with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) initiatives around MCIT, have the potential to provide a pathway to expediting adoption of this innovative technology. We are committed to providing physicians with ultra-high-resolution images of excised breast tissue ‘real-time’ during a surgical procedure combined with added artificial intelligence tools to help them interpret areas suspicious for cancer, with the goal of improving patient outcomes and lowering healthcare costs.”
Perimeter Medical Imaging AI is a Toronto-based company with U.S. headquarters in Dallas, Texas, that is developing and commercializing advanced imaging tools that allow surgeons, radiologists, and pathologists to visualize microscopic tissue structures during a clinical procedure. Perimeter’s Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) Imaging System provides clinicians with real-time, ultra-high-resolution, sub-surface image volumes of the margin (1-2 mm below the surface) of an excised tissue specimen. The ability to visualize microscopic tissue structures during a clinical procedure in addition to standard of care tissue assessment for decision making during the procedure has the potential to result in better long-term outcomes for patients and lower costs to the healthcare system. Perimeter’s OCT Imaging System is cleared by the FDA as an imaging tool in the evaluation of excised human tissue microstructure by providing two-dimensional, cross-sectional, real-time depth visualization, with image review manipulation software for identifying and annotating regions of interest.