Vida Diagnostics, a provider of AI-powered lung imaging analysis tools, today announced that it has raised $11 million in a series C round. CEO Susan A. Woods said the funds will be used to accelerate the commercialization and expansion of the company’s product portfolio, which she says could address market deficits in the early assessment, monitoring, and treatment of lung disease.
“We are driven to continuously raise the standard of care for patients with or at risk of lung disease. By equipping care teams with LungPrint, patient care and quality of life can be positively affected,” said Wood, who noted that lung disease impacts over 500 million people globally. “Vida is endlessly thankful for the extensive support of the people, resources, and programs from the State of Iowa leading to this expansive funding. Vida can now accelerate LungPrint’s market access, further connecting its benefits to the many millions of patients with lung disease.”
Vida’s LungPrint uses medical data, including chest CT scans, to provide a set of insights that could help inform treatment options. It integrates with radiology workflows, automatically evaluating lung density that may be indicative of emphysema and interstitial lung abnormalities, while providing planning and guidance for conditions like bronchoscopists, interventional pulmonologists, and thoracic surgeons. Using special topographic MPR techniques that sample and project non-overlapping airways onto a single image, Vida claims LungPrint is able to preserve CT scan resolution, as well as the context of surrounding tissue.
Vida also says it is FDA-cleared, CE-marked, Health Canada-licensed and TGA-registered for clinical use in the U.S., European Economic Area, Canada, and Australia. Beyond LungPrint, the company supports clinical trials with a range of services. Among these are preclinical imaging consulting; imaging protocol and imaging charter development; site qualification and training; data collection, storage, and management; quantitative CT assessment of lung function; expert, blinded image review project management and quality assurance; and data analysis and interpretation.
“Pulmonology and radiology are severely underserved areas of health care — the need is expanding and the number of clinicians is limited. Vida is in an optimal position to deliver innovation and increase access,” said First Analysis managing director and general partner Tracy Marshbanks in a statement. “This investment will enable Vida to meet the growing call for precise AI-driven lung analysis solutions that can help improve the quality of diagnosis and life for patients impacted by lung disease.”
Vida is one of several startups applying AI to health care challenges. Paige recently raised $45 million to continue its work in cancer diagnosis with AI models trained using clinical imaging data, and Aidoc nabbed $27 million for AI-assisted head, chest, abdominal, and spinal exams. Healthy.io taps machine learning to conduct urinalysis. Sight Diagnostics — which has raked in over $27.8 million in funding — leverages a family of algorithms to perform point-of-care complete blood count (CBC) tests with no more than a pinprick of blood. And just last month, Qure.ai snagged $16 million for AI that spots abnormalities in chest and head scans.
Coralville, Iowa-based Vida’s latest funding round was led by Analysis Corporation, with initial equity participation from Blue Heron Capital, UnityPoint Health Ventures, Next Level Ventures, Chartline Capital Partners, Rural Vitality Fund, Rittenhouse Ventures, Iowa First Capital Fund, and the Angels’ Forum. It brings the company’s total raised to date to over $20 million.