BreastIT, a portable device developed to help in diagnosing breast abnormalities like cancer, is among the five projects that will face off in the Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge 2018.
Developed by Alvin Kabwama, Moris Atwine, and David Mwesigwa, BreastIT uses ultrasound scanning to enable radiologists to make focused assessments and accelerate treatment decisions at the point of care.
BreastIT is a glove equipped with piezoelectric crystals, which produce ultrasound to screen for cancerous cells.
When the sound waves reach the inner parts of the breast, according to an interview Atwine had WorldLabs, they bounce off the breast tissue, producing different reflections.
The reflected waves are then used to generate images.
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These images are then sent to a software that uses machine learning and compares the images it has collected with what it already has in the database, and then gives a full analysis, says Atwine.
Using this tool, radiologists can be able to take decisive action, refer patients quickly, optimize the course of treatment, reducing the overall cost of care in low resource settings.
BreastIT was selected alongside Clarity Genomics from Belgium, Riffyn (US), UniteLabs (Switzerland) and UFraction8 (Scotland).
According to an official statement, the projects selected in this year’s competition have solutions covering Diagnostics for research, microbiome analysis, laboratory of the future and bioprocessing technology.
The final competition will be on October 10 in Boston.
The competition seeks informatics and technology-focused startups aiming to impact the way life science research and development is performed.
The five finalists will get $5000 (about Shs19 million) with two winners receiving $20,000 (about Shs76 million) based on judges and audience votes.
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