Peter Fischer, Inkspace Imaging - MRI Coils | LSI Europe '24

Peter Fischer 00:02
Peter, good morning, everyone. Thanks for having me. I'm Peter Fischer, CEO of Inkspace Imaging. Today, I'm going to share a story about the MRI coil technology platform we have developed over the past years and how we shape the future of MRI. MRI is a widely used diagnostic tool. So every week, 2 million MRI exams are performed worldwide, and at the core of these MRI exams are MRI receive coils, which are important to capture RF signals, essential for image quality. Yet nowadays, in hospitals, there is still technology used that is uncomfortable and inefficient. So this week, we are raising $4 million to complete our $10 million Series A to push our product commercialization and expand our product line for all patients. The clinical need was identified at Stanford Children's by one of our co-founders, My Nguyen, and when he moved to Berkeley, he, along with the other co-founder, Dr. Peter Fischer, decided to build the future MRI receive coils. You see, the momentum we have previously raised and also the recognition we got from several institutions for innovative work on MRI coil technology.

What's the problem in the market? The problem is that those MRI receive coils, as you can see here on the screen, are designed for six-foot men. This means that 85% of the population finds those coils do not fit well, or they do not fit at all. So the problem is they are uncomfortable. They are rigid. And for children, the solution to make it work for children is typically to sedate the children, which is suboptimal. So how do we address it? We have developed a printed electronics technology platform for advanced medical devices, with an initial focus on MRI receive coils. This makes the coils super lightweight and super flexible. To give you an idea, existing coils I showed earlier have a weight of 10 to 20 pounds. The coils we have developed are less than one pound. The youngest patient scanned so far was 18 hours old and three weeks premature, all the way up to retired people. The coil is so lightweight you can put it on the area of interest, and it's so flexible that it always sits snugly and creates the best signal-to-noise ratio with that image quality. We have several products already FDA cleared, and we are currently working closely with Siemens and GE on their MRI systems.

So why is it so important that the coil is lightweight and has a snug fit? This is an example. I guess we have no radiologists in the room, so on the left side, the patient is on the table. You see a grainy picture. If you take our coil and put it very close to the surface of the body of the area of interest, you get a super sharp image. And that's the whole point, and that's also what radiologists have confirmed over the previous years by using our coil in clinical settings; they can see things they couldn't see before. The typical spatial resolution of an MRI receive coil is one and a half to two millimeters; that went down to half a millimeter at the beginning, and we mean well, at the 200-micrometer range, and the doctors confirm that they can see things they couldn't see before. Here's another example. You see a 200-micrometer spatial resolution of a foot. So the MSK specialist got truly excited. And last, but not least, also for mothers and baby health, NYU did some studies here on unborn fetal imaging and did some brain studies.

So how do we compare in terms of... it doesn't flip. Oh, here we go. So how do we compare against existing coils? That's typically a question. We can say that we are generating 10 to 50% better image quality than existing coils, and radiologists have also proven that they can accelerate the exams by up to 45%. That means a lot, especially for younger patients and patients who are under anesthesia. So reducing the length and depth of anesthesia is very important. And then also for patients with claustrophobia, it's super important not to be in there for hours.

So we are looking into future products where we can make a difference in the existing MRI receive coil world. If anyone of you had a head exam, for instance, in the past, head coils are rigid plastic, like a medieval German dungeon-style torture device with a wire in front of your face; that's the moment to get claustrophobic. It's very inconvenient. And obviously, again, they are designed for one size, and if the head is too small, the signal isn't great. If the head is too large, it doesn't fit. If you have an injury, you can't apply those coils at all. So having something open, as we've shown you on our technology roadmap, is beneficial for the hospitals.

So we are looking into strategic growth on the next slide. We are working with several OEMs already, Siemens and GE as the market leader, and GE as number two. We have signed contracts with both of them. We are also working on Philips and have interest from Canon and Fuji. We have identified all those market players, which are obviously also potentially interesting for later acquisition. We are looking to expand the product pipeline significantly and then also add additional modalities.

What does the market size look like? Currently, it's around $1.5 billion for pure diagnostic imaging, and it's growing at a 6% CAGR, but there are a lot of additional opportunities for us in multi-modality imaging and even the veterinary market. So we are currently using three channels. We sell directly through our small team of sales executives. We have signed an agreement with an imaging distributor, and very importantly, we are working with the OEMs. Since the OEMs, when hospitals buy a new system, typically buy seven to 12 MRI receive coils, and we just recently signed an agreement with Siemens, so their sales executives are now selling our product as well, which is a great milestone for a startup.

We are targeting a little bit shy of a million dollars for this year, and then revenue goes up by approximately $2.5 to $3 million over the next years. We are very confident that the pricing and the gross margin are very acceptable for us, but also for our clinical partners and also for the OEMs. It also made it into the supply agreement with Siemens, and to give you an idea, for an OEM, if they win 1% market share just by differentiation of their product line with additional new coil features, that's a $300 million present value market opportunity for them long term. So differentiation for them is key.

We have built a team of executives here so we can cover all areas, from medical device development qualification, ramp-up medical device sales, and up to M&A, and also the Board of Directors gives us an opportunity for a lot of support. Sorry about that. So we have our co-founders still on board here. This is just a subset of advisors we are frequently using, and both members have relevant experience in the MRI and startup world.

As I mentioned, we are looking into closing the last $4 million now of our $10 million Series A round this week. The money will mainly go into product commercialization to push this into the market space, but in parallel, we are also developing additional product coils to make them available for all patients. So I'm here all week, and I hope that I will see some of you, and we get good discussions going with that. I would like to thank everyone.