Israeli medical firm RealView Imaging raised USD 10 million in a Series C financing round, the company said last week. New investors include Israeli crowdfunding platform OurCrowd, tech and medical entrepreneurs Judith and Kobi Richter, as well as leading physicians. A majority of the company’s existing shareholders also participated in this round, including leading Israeli medical entrepreneur Shimon Eckhouse, who has founded over two dozen startups, Zohar Gilon, and Uzia Galil.
Kobi Richter, founder and chairman of Medinol, and Michael Eldar, former director of the Cardiology Institute at Sheba Medical Center, joined the company’s board of directors as a consequence of this financing round.
RealView Imaging was founded in 2008 by Aviad Kaufman, Shaul Gelman, and Carmel Rotschild, with a seed investment led by Shimon Eckhouse. The company went on to develop the Holoscope-i, the world’s first medical holographic system that provides realistic, spatially accurate 3D in-air holograms. The Holoscope-i is designed for physicians to view and interact with hyper-realistic 3D holograms of the patient’s actual anatomy during interventional procedures.
The tech was used in the first live medical procedure at the Toronto General Hospital’s Peter Munk Cardiac Center last year, when cardiologists and cardiac surgeons performed a minimally invasive procedure to replace a worn-out surgical valve.
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RealView Imaging has 21 registered patents and another 14 pending applications, according to a press statement from the company.
With a focus on developing medical holography for multiple clinical applications, RealView Imaging is working on its next product, the Holoscope-x, which it says will “project 3D holographic images inside the patient’s body, making the patient literally transparent.” The product is designed to enable precise, minimally invasive interventional procedures, RealView Imaging says.
“RealView has created a unique solution that will address fundamental usability requirements and a wide range of clinical needs for advanced imaging,” said Kobi Richter in the statement. “Given the company’s broad IP portfolio and technology maturity, I believe RealView can significantly impact the growing field of structural heart interventions, as well as additional future clinical fields such as electrophysiology and interventional oncology procedures. All these fields strongly rely on advanced 3D imaging technologies that will guide the physician accurately and clearly in his intervention in patient’s spaces that are not visible to his eyes.”
Eckhouse said the company is now focused on commercializing the Holoscope-i system, starting in North America and Europe. “By incorporating medical holography into routine clinical workflow, we expect to revolutionize the way clinicians engage with 3D medical imaging,” he said.
This article first appeared in NoCamels, which covers innovations from Israel for a global audience.
