NEW YORK (360Dx) – Digital pathology startup Deep Lens announced today it has emerged from stealth mode with a $3.2 million seed financing round.
Sierra Ventures led the round with participation from Rev1 Ventures and Tamarind Hill Fund. The financing will be used to further develop Deep Lens' platform and deploy its flagship technology called VIPER, or Virtual Imaging for Pathology Education and Research, which is available as a public beta free of charge to pathologists.
The technology combines artificial intelligence with advanced pathology workflows and facilitates peer-to-peer and pathologist-to-patient collaboration, Columbus, Ohio-based Deep Lens said.
"VIPER has always been about empowering and enabling the pathology community, allowing them to focus on the nuanced cancer diagnoses and case-specific details that require many years of specialized medical training," Deep Lens Cofounder and CEO Dave Billiter said in a statement.
Billiter invented VIPER while he was director of the Biopathology Center Informatics Team and director of the Informatics Core of the Research Institute of Nationwide Children's Hospital. The technology was used and refined over a decade at more than 65 major institutions in eight countries, the company said, adding it has exclusively licensed the VIPER technology and image analysis methods with the aim of extending the platform with integrated and automated artificial intelligence.
VIPER will soon include AI-powered image detection, workflow support, telepathology, cloud storage, and built-in APIs that can be integrated by hardware and software vendors and biopharma firms, Deep Lens said. It has created an imaging lab where pathology groups can ship slides to the company, then receive digital versions of the slides within 48 hours along with free access to VIPER.
In conjunction with the financing, Mark Shary, managing member of Tamarind Hill, and Jeff Elton, CEO of Concerto Health AI will join Deep Lens' board of directors.