MRI product developer raises $30M in series A financing, plus more vendor fundraising news

NVision Imaging, a developer of MRI polarizers and contrast agents, has closed its $30 million series A financing round, the company announced June 22.

The tally includes $19.5 million from the German government, with Palo Alto, California-based investment firm Playground Global also pitching in among others. Ulm, Germany-headquartered NVision will use the money to advance the development of its quantum-powered polarizer, which it says is faster, more robust, and easier to use in MRI settings than traditional options.

“The impact that this technology will have on medicine is monumental,” Sella Brosh, MD, CEO of NVision, said in an announcement. “With more accessibility to this kind of technology and giving doctors more time to choose the right therapy for treatment, we can significantly improve a patient’s chance of recovery while not subjecting them to toxic treatments that hurt more than they help.”

Standard MRI can detect the effects of cancer therapy at the tissue level, but it may take months to show up after the onset of treatment, NVision noted. Metabolic magnetic resonance imaging using polarization, meanwhile, pinpoints early changes of key pathways at the cellular level within days after treatment.

NVision said it already has a partnership in place with Siemens Healthineers to deploy its technology at 50-plus cancer centers by 2025. Its quantum metabolic polarizers are planned for preclinical use sometime later this year, while the funding will fuel its eventual use in human care “in the coming years.”

Other funding news

Several other imaging-related vendors also announced progress in raising money to expand their business. Those include:

• Altis Labs has raised $6 million in seed funding, led by Benchstrength and Debiopharm. Trained on the “world’s largest” cancer imaging database, the company’s deep-learning technology helps predict clinical endpoints to quantify the impact of treatment.
• BrainTale has raised $4.9 million from Capital Grand Est and MACSF. The French med-tech startup offers software that utilizes MRIs to identify white matter alterations and predict the occurrence of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
• Leadoptik has scored $5 million in additional funding from Applied Ventures. The Silicon Valley-based startup is developing a miniaturized imaging system allowing surgeons to view deep inside human lungs to diagnose cancer earlier.
• Hypervision Surgical has raised nearly $8.3 million in its “oversubscribed” funding round, led by “a syndicate of highly experienced European and American HealthTech investors.” The company is developing an advanced surgical imaging and data analytics platform to help facilitate better decision-making during procedures.