Qingying Health Unveils Clinical Translation Solutions at SMRA Annual Meeting, Accelerating Commercialization of High-Resolution MR Vessel Wall Imaging

Although the impact of the pandemic persists, the enthusiasm within both academic and industrial circles for the research and development of magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), as well as for the translation of related achievements, has not waned in the slightest.From September 10 to 12, the Annual International Conference of the Society for Magnetic Resonance Angiography (SMRA) was held online as scheduled.

As the world’s most widely recognized premier international society for magnetic resonance angiography, SMRA attracts renowned MRI scientists and clinicians from around the globe to its annual meeting. The conference showcases the latest scientific achievements and cutting-edge products in the field, fostering the integration of technological advancements with clinical needs.The significance of this annual conference for promoting the integration of industry, academia, and research, as well as advancing the translation of scientific research, is self-evident.

Furthermore, SMRA jointly organized the "Machine Learning-Based Vascular Image Analysis" Challenge with MICCAI and selected the winners of the competition.

Hosted by the Biomedical Imaging Research Center at Tsinghua University, this conference featured Beijing Qingying Huakang Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Qingying Huakang”), a leading enterprise in high-resolution magnetic resonance vessel wall imaging technology, as a Platinum Partner. The company also provided exclusive support for the “Machine Learning-Based Vascular Image Analysis” Challenge.

Qingying Huakang shares an inseparable bond with the Biomedical Imaging Research Center at Tsinghua University.Qingying Huakang is a company incubated by the Biomedical Imaging Research Center of Tsinghua University. Its founder, Li Rui, serves not only as the Deputy Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at Tsinghua University but also as the Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Qingying Huakang.

The Tsinghua University team has nearly 30 years of foundational experience in this field, encompassing technology development, pathological validation, clinical trials, and data accumulation.With this accumulation,Qingying Huakang was jointly founded in 2016 by a team from Tsinghua University and relevant industry experts., transforming the research achievements of the Biomedical Imaging Research Center at Tsinghua University into products, and providing high-resolution magnetic resonance vessel wall imaging solutions for the diagnosis and treatment of cerebrovascular diseases.

Qingying Huakang High-Resolution Magnetic Resonance Vessel Wall Solution

Leveraging the scientific research strengths of the Tsinghua University team, as well as its own innovation and self-sustaining capabilities, Qingying Huakang has positioned itself at the forefront of technology development and clinical application. In its early stages, Qingying Huakang established collaborations with numerous medical imaging technology R&D institutions, Grade-A tertiary hospitals, major medical imaging equipment manufacturers, health checkup providers, third-party imaging centers, and emerging companies specializing in medical imaging data and artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, it has been certified as a High-Tech Enterprise in Zhongguancun and a National High-Tech Enterprise, and has secured multiple invention and utility model patents. This demonstrates that Qingying Huakang has a clear pathway for translating scientific research into practical applications.

On September 11, Dr. Chen Shuo, CTO of Qingying Huakang, delivered an academic presentation titled “High-Resolution MR Vessel Wall Imaging: From Laboratory to Clinical Practice—The Qingying Huakang Solution” at the conference., and shared Qingying Huakang’s scientific research achievements and related solutions.This highlights the key to Qingying Huakang’s success in translating scientific research into clinical applications and forging collaborations with multiple stakeholders.

For Qingying Huakang, its strength lies in scientific research and innovation; however, to fully realize the potential of these innovative achievements, it is essential to have a clear strategy for translating them into clinical applications.

Dr. Li Rui, the company's founder, told VCBeat“Qingying Huakang possesses end-to-end innovation capabilities spanning from imaging methodologies to clinical applications. This capability not only enables us to achieve breakthrough innovations in hardware, imaging techniques, and image processing algorithms, but also serves as the key factor allowing the company to innovatively apply these technologies in clinical settings, gather evidence-based medical data, and ultimately incorporate them into clinical guidelines—this is our ‘first hand.’ Our ‘second hand’ lies in clinical implementation; all technologies developed by Qingying Huakang are clinically oriented, originating from clinical needs and returning to clinical practice. The integration of innovation with clinical application forms a complete closed loop, generating intrinsic value and self-sustaining revenue streams for the enterprise. This has been a critical factor enabling us to establish collaborations with over 100 hospitals.”

Li Rui, Founder of Qingying Huakang

One year ago, when VCBeat interviewed Qingying Huakang, the company had just completed its Pre-A financing round. Its high-resolution vascular wall imaging screening protocol and precise 4D blood flow imaging solution had achieved certain results. A year later, Qingying Huakang’s scientific research achievements have been translated into commercial products.

Qingying Huakang has integrated high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology, specialized imaging sequences, dedicated high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) imaging coils, artificial intelligence (AI) interpretation algorithms, and imaging workstations into a comprehensive solution. This provides hospitals with a one-stop, precision imaging service spanning from image acquisition to report generation, thereby standardizing clinical applications of high-resolution MRI and making them simpler and more efficient.Its solution places significant emphasis on the acquisition of imaging data.From Qingying Huakang’s perspective, if the relevant information is not captured during the initial image acquisition process, no amount of subsequent post-processing can recover the valuable data that was lost at the outset.

Dr. Li Rui told VCBeat“With the development of the Imaging Center over the years, we have made a series of advances in scientific research, teaching, and public service. After ten years of accumulation, with more than 500 SCI papers published, the Imaging Center has become one of the most important medical imaging research institutions internationally. In the next decade, we will place greater emphasis on translation, aiming to truly implement our research findings in China.”

It was against this backdrop that Qingying Huakang emerged.We hope that more scientific and technological achievements can be translated into applications, moving from “domestic substitution” to “domestic superiority,” and gradually achieving internationalization.

High-resolution magnetic resonance vessel wall imaging protocols are undoubtedly a powerful tool for providing precise diagnosis, treatment decision-making, and prognosis assessment of cerebrovascular diseases in clinical practice. This is particularly essential for addressing critical clinical needs, such as diagnosing the vulnerability of atherosclerotic plaques and assessing the risk of aneurysm rupture.

Qingying Huakang is leveraging its foundational scientific resources and commercial pathways to provide support for the aforementioned medical challenges.In response, the company has identified two strategic directions: a technology transfer platform and a product commercialization platform.

Qingying Huakang Enhances Its Ability to Rapidly Translate Basic Research Innovations into Products by Building a Technology Transfer Platform, we will launch more innovative imaging solutions that meet clinical needs, achieving disruptive technological advancements. We will build a team capable of translating research into practical outcomes, leveraging the open software and hardware development platform created by Qingying Huakang to integrate various advanced imaging solutions with specific clinical applications. Together with research institutes, we will establish streamlined processes for intellectual property commercialization, fostering a win-win collaborative ecosystem that accelerates the translation of more scientific achievements into practical applications.

On the other hand, Qingying Huakang will advance the commercialization of its achievements over the next decade by building a product commercialization platform.By engaging both enterprises and hospitals, we promote product commercialization through strategic and sales partnerships with imaging manufacturers. Simultaneously, we collaborate with hospitals to build a resource network and jointly advance research, thereby generating evidence-based medical data for our products and establishing our standardized enterprise solutions as a strong clinical necessity.

As Dr. Li Rui mentioned:“In the future, we are highly committed to integrating the outstanding original innovations from universities and research institutes into our company’s translation platform, thereby facilitating the conversion of scientific research into hard-tech products. This will enable these achievements to truly step out of the ‘ivory tower,’ benefit more physicians and patients, and realize their commercial value.” Qingying Huakang will take this as its core strategy to continuously promote the collaborative development of industry, academia, research, and application.