MONTREAL, Nov. 15, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Imagia, a Montreal-based healthcare artificial intelligence (AI) company developing radiomics biomarkers and clinical decision support systems, today announced the completion of its acquisition of Cadens Medical Imaging (Cadens), a technology leader in medical imaging software.
Since 2008, Cadens has developed and marketed FDA and CE cleared innovative medical imaging software products for cancer care. An ISO 13485 company, Cadens has extensive experience in delivering patient benefits through AI-based software products. Cadens created and validated unique foundational technologies and intellectual property intended to enable Imagia to foster new collaborative biomarker discovery processes that will scale across multiple healthcare institutions.
"This strategic transaction will significantly accelerate Imagia's mission of delivering AI-driven accessible personalized healthcare solutions," said Frédéric Francis, CEO of Imagia. "Augmenting Imagia's deep learning expertise with Cadens' capabilities in clinical AI and imaging was extremely compelling to ensure our path from validation to commercialization. This is particularly true for our initial focus on developing oncology biomarkers that can improve cancer care by predicting a patient's disease progression and treatment response."
"Our combined team will build upon the long-term outlook of clinical research together with healthcare partnerships, and the energy and focus of a technology startup with privileged access to deep learning expertise and academic research from Yoshua Bengio's MILA lab. We are now uniquely positioned to deliver AI-driven solutions across the healthcare ecosystem," said Florent Chandelier, Cadens' co-founder and Imagia CTO.
The motivation of Imagia's founders, Alexandre Le Bouthillier and Nicolas Chapados, was to find the most impactful way that AI could benefit cancer patients. To that end, Cadens contributes several longstanding clinical research collaborations with key opinion leaders in radiology and oncology.
The acquisition was funded through proceeds from Imagia's Series A financing that was initiated in December 2016 led by BDC Healthcare Venture Fund and joined by Fidelity Investments Canada ULC.
"Imaging evolved considerably in the past decade in terms of sequence acquisition as well as image quality and we believe AI enables the creation of next generation diagnostics that will also allow personalization of care," said Jean-Francois Pariseau, Chairman of the Board of Imagia and Partner at the BDC Healthcare Venture Fund. "The acquisition of Cadens is an important step in building the Imagia platform and supports our strategy of investing in ground breaking companies with the potential to become world leaders in their field."
About Imagia
www.imagia.com
Founded in 2015, Imagia is leveraging advances in AI to enable accessible personalized healthcare. Imagia's primary goal is to foster AI-first collaborations to unite deep learning and clinical expertise, and to scale up the discovery of radiomics biomarkers to deliver impactful products and services to physicians and their patients. With its first focus on oncology, Imagia's Deep Radiomics biomarkers will allow clinicians and pharmaceutical companies to predict a patient's personalized disease progression and treatment response. Imagia's custom-built clinical decision support systems & real-time AI solutions enable image-guided medical device manufacturers to improve interventional procedures.
About BDC Capital
www.bdc.ca/capital
With more than $2 billion under management, BDC Capital is the investment arm of BDC, serving as a strategic partner to Canada's most innovative and high potential firms. It offers a range of equity, venture capital and flexible growth and transition capital solutions to help Canadian entrepreneurs scale their businesses into global champions.
About Fidelity Investments Canada
www.fidelity.ca
Fidelity Investments Canada ULC is part of the broader group of companies collectively known as "Fidelity Investments", one of the world's largest providers of financial services. Fidelity Investments Canada ULC manages approximately $135 billion in mutual fund and institutional assets (as at October 31, 2017). This includes approximately $22 billion in assets for institutional clients including public and corporate defined benefit pension plans, endowments, foundations and other corporate assets on behalf of clients across Canada.
Media Contacts for Imagia:
Tony Russo & Amiad Finkelthal, Russo Partners [email protected]
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SOURCE Imagia
