Shenzhen DeepZhi Medical Secures Tens of Millions in Series A Funding to Advance AI-Powered Ultrasound Solutions
VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that Shanghai Shenzhi Information Technology Co., Ltd., a company specializing in AI-powered ultrasound, has completed its Series A financing round worth tens of millions of yuan, with Shunyi Capital as the sole investor.
Zhang Zhuo, a partner at Shenzhi Technology, stated that in February 2020, the U.S. FDA approved the first AI-based ultrasound imaging assistance system. Following this round of financing, Shenzhi Technology will continue to deepen its focus on AI ultrasound applications, accelerate innovation in key technologies, expand the range of conditions supported by AI-assisted ultrasound diagnosis in primary care markets, and advance the approval process for its Class III medical device certification.
Leveraging its robust R&D capabilities and solid industrialization expertise in the field of AI-powered ultrasound, Shanghai Shenzhi Information Technology Co., Ltd. is the first company in China to achieve real-time dynamic medical ultrasound analysis. The technical team holds more than 50 domestic and international patents in ultrasound hardware, artificial intelligence systems, chips, and cloud computing, making it the only ultrasound AI company in China with proprietary underlying algorithms.
Shenzhi Technology has established partnerships with numerous leading medical device manufacturers and Meinian Onehealth, successfully achieving the commercialization and industrialization of AI-enabled ultrasound. During the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, Shenzhi Technology, in collaboration with Siduoke Medical Technology Co., Ltd., donated 20 handheld intelligent rapid-diagnosis ultrasound systems to hospitals on the front lines. These systems met the need for portable diagnostics among frontline physicians, lowered the threshold for diagnosis, reduced the risk of cross-infection among healthcare workers, and received high acclaim from medical staff on the front lines.
Shenzhi Technology was officially established in late 2018, incubated by Sduo Tech, a leading domestic manufacturer of handheld ultrasound devices. The company specializes in the intelligentization of ultrasound diagnostics and AI applications in ultrasound. Its Intelligent Algorithm Center comprises more than ten PhDs educated in the United States and millions of high-quality annotated imaging datasets. It has currently built an imaging database featuring algorithm models for over ten categories and more than 30 disease types, and has successfully established a Cloud Center for Ultrasound Imaging. AI-assisted ultrasound diagnosis currently covers more than twenty conditions, including those affecting the thyroid, breast, liver, carotid artery plaques, pelvic floor, orthopedics, and neurology.
Shenzhi Technology’s R&D team is led by PhDs from world-leading institutions such as Harvard University, MIT, Columbia University, the University of California, and China’s top universities including Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It brings together top-tier, interdisciplinary talent from both domestic and international spheres in the fields of artificial intelligence, ultrasound hardware and software, and medicine. Meanwhile, Shenzhi Technology boasts the most substantial reserve of ultrasound physicians in China, safeguarding its primary healthcare services.
Zhang Zhuo, a partner at Shenzhi Technology, graduated with a degree in Clinical Medicine from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He previously served as an ultrasonologist and has over ten years of clinical experience in ultrasound imaging.
She stated, “From the outset of our ultrasound initiatives, we aimed to deploy ultrasound technology at the primary care level to address the real-world challenge of insufficient diagnostic capabilities in these settings. However, the harsh reality is that primary care physicians often lack adequate training and experience, and expensive equipment frequently goes underutilized once deployed in these resource-limited environments. Therefore, to develop a portable, intelligent, and low-cost device, the integration of artificial intelligence is undoubtedly a viable solution.”
In the application of medical AI, artificial intelligence is nearly ubiquitous in imaging diagnostic products such as CT and mammography. While the “AI + Imaging” sector has become a hotbed of activity, the “AI + Ultrasound” niche has attracted relatively little attention, as the high barriers to R&D in AI-based ultrasound imaging have kept many AI imaging companies out of the market. Meanwhile, in early 2020, the U.S. FDA cleared Caption Guidance’s AI-powered imaging system, signaling that China’s AI ultrasound sector is poised for a rapid emergence in the ensuing period.
Zhang Zhuo summarized the challenges of applying AI to ultrasound into three major aspects. First, regarding the need for dynamic capture: unlike static imaging, ultrasound produces dynamic images, generating approximately 25 frames per second, with relatively low resolution for individual frames. Second, although the clarity of ultrasound images is lower than that of optical images, they hold significant clinical value. Ultrasound requires real-time diagnosis rather than post-acquisition image processing; therefore, using AI to enhance image clarity presents a substantial challenge. Third, there is the challenge of achieving standardized and normalized diagnosis and treatment in primary care hospitals, extending reach to the most basic medical units in China, while also addressing the shortage of experienced radiologists in these settings. Unlike CT and MRI, which have standard anatomical planes, ultrasound diagnosis largely relies on dynamic images acquired from various planes by the operator. This places high demands on the sonographer’s technical skills and poses significant requirements for AI-assisted diagnosis.
To address these challenges, Shenzhi Technology leverages artificial intelligence for image quality enhancement. By utilizing big data and deep learning to process low-resolution raw ultrasound images, the system optimizes image quality and enables intelligent segmentation and measurement of lesions. This ensures data validity and accuracy, thereby assisting primary care physicians in making rapid diagnoses.
Secondly, Shenzhi Technology has always adhered to a scenario-driven approach, developing a standardized workflow for portable ultrasound operations tailored to primary care physicians. Its AI-assisted diagnostic software can function in both Wi-Fi-connected and offline modes, and can be either embedded within portable or desktop ultrasound systems or deployed on external computing devices.
As a key strategic initiative by Stoic in the AI sector, Shenzhi Technology operates in a field with substantial potential for incremental market growth. Dr. Robert Ochs, Deputy Director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, stated during the approval of Caption Health’s AI-assisted software for adult cardiac ultrasound examinations that the significance of allowing this AI-ultrasound diagnostic aid to enter the market extends beyond its use by ultrasound specialists. The broader future application of AI in ultrasound lies in enabling general healthcare personnel, such as nurses in family clinics, to utilize ultrasound technology, thereby facilitating earlier and more accurate disease detection.
This implies that the future market potential for AI-assisted ultrasound diagnostic systems extends beyond the existing installed base of ultrasound devices, encompassing a vast incremental market. In the future, primary care clinics and a broader range of clinical departments will be equipped with pocket-sized ultrasound devices and AI-assisted ultrasound diagnostic software. In China, the deployment of AI ultrasound at the primary care level will serve as a powerful tool to facilitate tiered diagnosis and treatment, alleviate the uneven distribution of medical resources, and assist primary care physicians in making diagnoses. With approximately 840,000 primary healthcare institutions in China handling around 2.5 billion outpatient visits annually, it is estimated that AI ultrasound holds a substantial market capacity.
Taking the breast, which is currently covered by Shenzhi Technology, as an example, breast cancer has become the most prevalent disease among Chinese women. Ultrasound is also an important screening tool for breast cancer. According to the 2018 China Cancer Statistics Report, there were approximately 278,900 new cases of female breast cancer in China in 2014, accounting for 16.51% of all malignant tumors in women.
Although the grassroots market is vast, AI imaging diagnostic software aiming to be integrated into hardware devices for deployment at the grassroots level cannot ignore the reality of limited purchasing power in grassroots healthcare. Compared with large-scale imaging equipment such as CT scanners, ultrasound instruments are more affordable, and portable ultrasound devices are even more suitable for grassroots settings, making them more likely to become standard equipment in grassroots medical institutions.
The integration of multimodal disease diagnosis technologies with low-cost, portable devices will penetrate the primary care ultrasound market.
In addition to its vast market prospects, Shenzhi Technology has gained recognition from the capital market. Zhang Zhuo believes that this reflects the company’s comprehensive strength: on one hand, Shenzhi Technology boasts profound accumulation in product technology, enabling its products to be applied across multiple scenarios, including tertiary hospitals, primary care institutions, and clinical departments; on the other hand, the company demonstrates strong collaborative R&D and production capabilities for both software and hardware products.
Since its establishment, Shenzhi Technology has built a strong foundation through sustained efforts, prioritizing R&D while deeply engaging with China’s healthcare landscape to identify and address critical pain points. In the coming year, Shenzhi Technology will continue to advance steadily, providing affordable technological solutions to more healthcare institutions and enabling broader access to convenient and reliable medical services.