A few clicks that can detect breast cancer

Niramai offers thermo analytics-based cancer screening solution that helps detect breast cancer early

Every year breast cancer claims the lives of over 76,000 women in India and 500,000 globally. A majority of them can be cured and saved if detected early. The current technique of testing like mammography is radiation-based and painful, and not effective for women below 45.

A Bengaluru-based health analytics start-up, Niramai, is using a new technique to detect breast cancer early. It combines an existing technique for cancer screening, thermography with machine learning, to develop a statistical model for cancer diagnosis.

Niramai calls it Thermalytix, a fusion of analytics over thermal imaging, and has applied for patents. It is a disruptive technique that can detect breast cancer early and costs only a tenth of what the existing tests do.

The start-up thinks its solution can overcome the cultural barriers and privacy concerns of women on cancer screening and can become a part of their preventive health check-up. “Niramai's solution is non-contact, non-invasive, safe, accurate and portable, and works for women of all age groups,” says Geetha Manjunath, chief executive and founder.

The company, working in research mode with two hospitals and a diagnostic lab, has tested the cancer-screening tool on 400 patients, and the early results are promising. Next, it would go for clinical trials on more patients. It is targeting a commercial launch by August. 

Last week, it raised funds from investors, including pi Ventures, Ankur Capital, Axilor Ventures, 500 Start-ups, and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal. 

Manish Singhal, founding partner, pi Ventures, feels that Niramai can become the go-to solution for early-stage diagnosis for breast cancer globally. That is a huge opportunity, not just from a business perspective but also they can help save many lives.

The technology 

Niramai, which stands for non-invasive risk assessment with machine intelligence, uses a high-resolution thermal camera as a device and a cloud-hosted analytics solution to analyse the images. “The unique value proposition of Nirmai's solution is the ability to detect it early and in a completely privacy-sensitive way,” says Manjunath. 

Manish Singhal, founding partner, pi Ventures, says he feels Niramai can become the go-to solution for early-stage diagnosis for breast cancer globally

Niramai uses a patented methodology called Thermalytix, which is a fusion of machine analytics over thermal imaging. The technique removes the accuracy limitation that existed in the highly sensitive medically proven method of detecting cancer called thermography and makes it suitable to interpretation by any clinician.

Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence (AI), which uses data from a small group of patients along with their diagnosis to build a mathematical representation of an expert doctor's brain that can help make decisions. This mathematical model is then applied on undiagnosed patients data to predict the likelihood of a disease in the patient. Niramai’s tool uses AI to enable easy and accurate interpretation of thermal images and intended to be used by a doctor.

How it began

This idea goes back to a few years. Founders Geetha Manjunath and Nidhi Mathur while working with Xerox India thought of bringing this technology to Indian women. They worked on imaging and engaged with hospitals in the process. Soon they began Niramai that can detect breast cancer with just a few clicks. 

The patient is sent to a cold room where her body temperature is regulated. After that, the patient is taken to the testing room where a device kept at a distance of three-feet captures the temperature distribution, which is automatically analysed by the Niramai tool. 

The analysis is based on the medical physiology of tumour tissues which behave differently when there is malignancy.

Opportunity

According to an estimate, only a tenth of the two billion women who need diagnosis for breast cancer get their tests done. This gap is the opportunity for Niramai. The founders say the current technology available can only diagnose breast cancer once it has reached a critical stage, but their product can detect at an early stage. 

Mathur, who is the chief operations officer, says that their competition in India is not with any other diagnostic firm or technology, as most screening methods today look for lumps. 

The global breast imaging equipment market, growing at a compounded rate of 8.5 per cent annually, is expected to reach $4.14 billion by 2021. In 2015, of the $2.6-billion worth of breast imaging equipment sold, mammography accounted for 50 per cent, while non-ionising modalities market was nearly $1billion, according to market surveys. 

Nearly 140 million mammography screenings are performed every year (each test costs around Rs 3,000 in India). And, 36 per cent of these require correlation using another imaging modality. Around 2.7 billion women will need breast cancer screening by the next 15 years. Though path-breaking and cheaper, the new testing technique will have to go through the adoption cycle any new technology goes through.

 

EXPERT TAKE

The tech has to be comparable to breast mammography before it can be replaced

Thermography technique to detect breast cancer has its ups and downs. While the positive aspect of the technique is that one can detect breast cancer without any radiation as opposed to techniques like mammography where there is radiation, discomfort and cost involved. The volumes of women who need to get screening for breast cancer which should be low cost, easy and has high sensitivity and specificity will benefit by this technology. The technology has to improve and be comparable to breast mammography before it can be replaced.

This technology is not foolproof, as even the heat, inflammation and infections can cause similar changes on thermography on the breast that can look like a tumour when actually there is no tumour. Malignancy detected may or may not be  there .

Dr Ramesh Sarin

Oncologist, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, Delhi