Technology in Development

Perceptronix has developed and holds multiple patents for its ground-breaking technology in cancer imaging for which it is actively seeking business to business arrangements for commercial development.

Endoscopy

Perceptronix has developed two fluorescence bronchoscopy systems, ClearVu™ and ClearVu™ Elite, that encompass break-through innovations in cancer imaging and are anticipated to have significant clinical impact in the detection and localization of early lung cancer. With further development, these innovations may also be applied to improve clinical outcomes with other diseases and other clinical applications such as microsurgery.

Autofluorescence Bronchoscopy

White light illumination is the original modality in endoscopy, but over the past decade it has been augmented by autofluorescence (“AF”) endoscopy technology which exploits the natural fluorescence of tissue. Autofluorescence bronchoscopy (“AFB”) was developed at the BC Cancer Agency to enhance the ability of pulmonologists to visualize and biopsy pre-invasive and micro-invasive cancers which are not visible in white light. Suspicious areas appear as dark or red on a green background.

AFB enables improved sensitivity for the early detection of lung cancer, a claim now supported by extensive experience and literature. Despite these advances, AFB technology has a number of limitations that ClearVu™ and ClearVu™ Elite are designed to address.

ClearVu™ – Simultaneous White Light and Fluorescence Imaging

The ClearVu™ system is a patented accessory compatible with any type of fiber optic endoscope. It is comprised of a special camera, light source and digital imaging system that displays, records and analyses both regular white light and fluorescence images simultaneously. In effect, ClearVu™ performs two endoscopy procedures at the same time, thereby reducing costs, patient discomfort and risk. ClearVu™ is currently in the alpha prototype development phase.

ClearVu™ Elite – Real-time Spectral Analysis

The increased sensitivity of autofluorescence bronchoscopy comes at the cost of roughly doubling the rate of biopsies that prove to be benign (false positives). This is a significant impediment to the adoption of AF technology due to the imputed costs and increased patient risk. ClearVu™ Elite is designed to mitigate this problem.

The ClearVu™ Elite endoscopy system is a future product (fiber optic digital imaging endoscopy accessory) designed to add practical real-time spectral analysis to AF imaging to assess suspicious tissue before a biopsy is taken. It does this by collecting the reflected white light and fluorescence light for spectral analysis from the centre of the image plane. This process is expected to add about 5 minutes to the total procedure.

ClearVu™ Elite¹ has undergone an international multi-centered clinical study to develop a robust decision making algorithm based on spectral data. Current clinical data suggests that a 50% reduction in false positive biopsies can be achieved at a loss of about 10% of sensitivity. This would restore AF bronchoscopy to the same specificity as white light bronchoscopy while preserving most of the factor of three increase in sensitivity resulting from AF detection of early lesions.

ClearPath™ - Quantitative Pathology System

ClearPath™ is an interactive quantitative microscopy system for use with H&E stained biopsy sections to aid pathologists in making definitive diagnoses of pre-cancerous and early cancerous lesions. ClearPath™ uses proprietary software to measure tissue under the microscope and compares this information for reference against a large database of consensus graded biopsy images.

The ClearPath™ proprietary reference database was graded by world renowned BCCA pathologists and assists the pathologist with confirmation of their diagnosis.

ClearVu™, ClearVu™ Elite, and ClearPath™ are currently in development, and not yet licensed for sale.

¹ Development of the ClearVu™ Elite system is partially supported by a contribution from the National Research Council of Canada Industrial Research Assistance Program.