The healthcare technology space is in a rapidly evolving phase, with numerous solutions entering the market every day. However, despite cardiovascular disease being the leading cause of death and disability in every single developed country, the diagnostics that facilities are using today are not providing sufficient accuracy or precision to make treatment decisions specific to the individual patient. As a result, there is a plethora of avoidable heart attacks and strokes that occur “Treatments are available. We are simply not getting the right patients to the right treatments on a consistent basis. We have 50% of patients that are having heart attacks who are considered low-risk by conventional risk scores. And we have patients routed to the wrong treatment when there are better-suited treatment pathways likely to lead to a better outcome. Elucid is providing physicians with more complete, accurate, and specific information than has ever before been possible to enable patient-specific treatment decisions,” begins Blake Richards, CEO of Elucid.
Most of today’s stress tests are not inaccurate for detecting narrowed arteries, but none of them detect the primary driver of cardiovascular risk: atherosclerotic plaque. Elucid analyzes a CT scan by applying machine learning to determine plaque type and quantity as though you were looking at excised patient tissue under microscope, providing information not discernable from a standard CT scan. In fact, heart attack and stroke are primarily caused by non-obstructive, but unstable plaque in the arteries that goes undiagnosed and untreated. Elucid is harnessing scientific imaging and artificial intelligence to enable quick, accurate, non-invasive diagnoses and precise treatment of cardiovascular disease to enable better patient outcomes. “Elucid is the only software characterizing the plaque based on biology, which ensures it is highly accurate and actionable,” said Richards.
The Innovative Image Analysis Solutions
Elucid is the first FDA-cleared and CE-marked non-invasive software to quantify atherosclerotic plaque characteristics compared to histopathology, including Lipid Rich Necrotic Core. The company has published studies for its derivation of fractional flow reserve (FFRCT) based on the vasodilative capacity of the vessel wall and even the estimation of gene expression from CTA. This unique information informs improved treatment decisions by physicians leading to better patient outcomes, improved quality of care, and reduced healthcare costs. Elucid’s non-invasive image analysis software is the first and only which employs CT angiography and patented computer algorithms, based on expert histologic examination of thousands of tissue samples, to objectively quantify the extent and stability of arterial plaque for tailored patient care. Advanced clinical insights from Elucid equip physicians with critical information designed to enable precision medicine.
Elucid’s software analyzes a standard CT scan that has already been performed to quantify and characterize the plaque present. This helps providers to better assess a patient’s true risk of event. Elucid is uniquely able to quantify and characterize a patient’s high-risk plaque that’s more likely to result in a heart attack or stroke as compared to other types of plaque that are more stable. This is achieved by training the machine learning models based on histology: Patients who had a CT scan then had tissue collected during surgery, which allowed pathologists to study the tissue slice by slice under a microscope. This data was used to train algorithms to accurately identify the same tissue type on other CT scans. “The solution replicates what a pathologist would see under a microscope. Elucid is the only software that has taken this approach to validate what they’re seeing against the biological ground truth rather than simply quantifying how bright or dark the plaque, which does not correspond to biology. Our solution accurately characterizes the plaque in the artery wall and calculates how much disease is in that artery to estimate the ability of that artery to dilate under periods of stress,” explains Todd C. Villines, M.D, Chief Medical Officer of Elucid.
Delivering Cutting-Edge Healthcare
When it comes to the coronary CT angiography space, Elucid’s technology can help deliver better care to patients and gives more specific and accurate information. In fact, the growth rates of CT angiography are enormous. CT is incredibly powerful as a tool. “At Elucid, we take it to an even further level. Our software product is straightforward, easy to utilize, and seamless to deploy,” explains Richards. As Villines mentioned, “What Elucid is doing goes beyond what the human eye can discern, even at the highest level of skill. Providing the highest quality information to physicians to help patients is why we are all here at Elucid.”
Since opening its doors, Elucid has been a pioneer in delivering cutting-edge healthcare solutions to its clientele. The company’s mission is to provide comprehensive and accurate clinical insights, based on ground-truth histology and machine learning, enabling unprecedented precision healthcare for vascular disease. Today, the company envisions a world where they see the value, where every CT angiography is run through this software to extract the most accurate and complete information as to who is at the greatest risk. More importantly, this enables establishment of a clear and precise treatment pathway for each individual patient.
