AI Medical Imaging Firm Imsight Med Secures RMB 20 Million Series A Led by Lenovo Capital

Recently, VCBeat learned that Shenzhen Vision Medical Technology Co., Ltd., a tech company applying artificial intelligence and medical image analysis technologies to assist in diagnosis, announced the completion of its first round of financing, amounting to nearly 20 million RMB, led byLenovo CapitalLead Investor.

Prior to this, Visionary Medical Technology received a grant of several million Hong Kong dollars from the Innovation and Technology Commission of Hong Kong. Chen Hao, founder and chief scientist of Visionary Medical Technology, revealed that the first round of financing will be primarily used for building the core team, as well as for the research, development, and refinement of its technologies and products. It is reported that Visionary Medical Technology has established strategic partnerships with several top-tier Grade A tertiary hospitals, including West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center in Guangzhou, and Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong.

Shenzhen Shijian Medical Technology, established in February 2017, is an innovative high-tech company co-founded by experts in artificial intelligence and medical imaging, along with executives from Fortune 500 companies. Leveraging computer-aided medical image analysis and artificial intelligence technologies, the company achieves intelligent recognition and analysis of medical imaging data, thereby providing rapid and precise auxiliary diagnostic and treatment solutions. This approach alleviates the heavy and tedious repetitive workload of physicians while enhancing diagnostic accuracy and efficiency. Currently, Shijian Medical’s product development focuses on three main areas: auxiliary diagnosis for radiological imaging (DR/CT/MR), auxiliary delineation of radiotherapy target volumes, and auxiliary diagnosis for pathological imaging (cytology and histology).

Shijian Medical’s technical expert team boasts over 20 years of accumulated expertise in computerized medical imaging technology.Dr. Chen Hao, Founder and Chief Scientist, graduated from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong., recipient of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme, with visiting and internship experience at UMC in the Netherlands and Siemens’ R&D Center in the United States; research interests includeMedical Image Computing, Machine Learning (Deep Learning), Computer Vision, etc.。

Since 2014, Chen Hao has led his team to secure global championships in dozens of international medical image analysis and recognition challenges, defeating strong competitors from top-tier enterprises and medical imaging research institutions.

Another leading technical expert, Professor Wang Ping’an, Co-Founder and Honorary Chairman, is a Chang Jiang Scholar appointed by the Ministry of Education. He serves as Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Director of the Research Centre for Virtual Reality, Visualization and Imaging, Director of the Key Strategic Research Program in Computer-Assisted Medicine, and Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His primary research interests include computer-assisted medicine, applications of virtual reality in medicine, interactive scientific visualization, 3D medical imaging, 3D user interfaces, and interactive computer graphics.

The other dozen or so core members of the Vision Medical technology team are also composed of PhD holders from top-tier universities such as The Chinese University of Hong Kong, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, The University of Hong Kong, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

In addition to boasting a top-tier technical team, Wang Feng, Co-founder and CEO of Vision Medical Technology, has cultivated extensive experience in China’s commercial market. Prior to joining Vision Medical Technology, Wang served as Vice President at Lenovo Group for many years, where he oversaw operations of branch offices across China, Lenovo China’s PC business for personal and small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), and Lenovo China’s mobile phone business. His extensive background in marketing, sales, and management has endowed him with profound expertise and a deep understanding of the Chinese commercial market.

This has also helped VisionMed establish a product development path integrating medicine and engineering from the outset. Within just four months of its founding, the company established collaborative R&D partnerships with more than ten top-tier Grade A tertiary hospitals in China, fully combining cutting-edge technology with the clinical knowledge and experience of leading medical experts. This has enabled the development of high-quality products that truly address physicians’ pain points and seamlessly integrate into hospital diagnosis and treatment workflows, thereby achieving genuine translation from scientific research to clinical application.

Shijian Medical’s core products span three key areas:

First,Radiology-Based Computer-Aided Diagnosis System。In January 2016, a survey was conducted among 1,241 medical imaging physicians. One notable finding was that over 50% of radiologists spent more than eight hours daily reviewing images, and 20.6% worked an average of more than 10 hours per day, indicating an extremely heavy workload. Meanwhile, the annual growth rate of China’s medical imaging market stood at 30%, whereas the growth rate of radiologists was only 4.1%, suggesting that the shortage of radiologists will continue to widen.

The Shijian AI-assisted diagnostic system effectively helps physicians improve diagnostic efficiency. For instance, in the early diagnosis of lung cancer using low-dose chest CT, a senior physician typically requires 3–5 minutes to complete the workflow from lesion detection and anatomical localization to qualitative assessment and quantitative analysis. In contrast, the Shijian system accomplishes this in approximately 10 seconds, while maintaining a sensitivity of over 90% for detecting small pulmonary nodules and keeping the number of false positives below two per case. The underlying technology previously won first place in the 2016 ISBI (International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging) Challenge.

Currently, the Shijian Radiology AI-Assisted Diagnostic System has achieved intelligent diagnosis of DR, CT, and MRI images across multiple anatomical regions and disease types. Furthermore, it enables cross-modal fusion of various imaging modalities, thereby further enhancing the accuracy and clinical value of assisted diagnosis.

In addition to radiological imaging, pathological examination is also a crucial component of clinical diagnosis, regarded as the gold standard for disease diagnosis; pathologists are often referred to as "the doctor's doctor."

Data from the Information and Statistics Center of the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) show that there are fewer than 10,000 registered pathologists in China, meaning there is only one pathologist for every 140,000 people. According to the “Guidelines for the Construction and Management of Pathology Departments (Trial)” issued by the NHFPC in 2009, which stipulates a staffing ratio of 1–2 pathologists per 100 hospital beds, and given that China currently has more than 6 million hospital beds, it can be estimated that the shortage of pathologists in China is on the order of 30,000 to 50,000, representing a substantial gap.

A whole-slide pathology image contains billions of pixels, making manual visual inspection highly time-consuming and prone to incomplete coverage. Furthermore, physician fatigue can adversely affect diagnostic accuracy.

Vision Medical'sPathology Imaging-Assisted Diagnostic SystemThis approach can effectively address the aforementioned issues. First, computational speed: while a pathologist typically requires approximately 10 minutes or more to examine a single slide, an algorithm can complete the analysis in just over ten seconds. Second, comprehensiveness: whereas physicians rely on experience to select key suspicious regions for examination, algorithms can perform a comprehensive, whole-slide analysis without omission. Third, stability: machines do not require rest and are unaffected by fatigue, ensuring that diagnostic results remain fully objective, consistent, and reproducible.

“The development of AI-assisted pathological diagnosis technologies can also enhance the clinical value of whole-slide scanners, thereby accelerating the digitization of pathological imaging and facilitating multi-data integration in patient diagnosis and treatment,” said Chen Hao.

The third major product segment of Shijian isRadiotherapy-Assisted ContouringRadiotherapy refers to the use of high-energy radiation to irradiate tumor regions, thereby inhibiting and killing cancer cells. It is one of the primary methods for clinical cancer treatment and can be combined with surgery and chemotherapy as a key component of comprehensive cancer management. Precise delineation of the tumor target volume is critical for accurate radiation delivery and is a key determinant of radiotherapy efficacy.

Furthermore, during radiotherapy, the protection of critical healthy tissues and organs is also of paramount importance. High-energy radiation exposure to healthy areas should be avoided as much as possible to prevent unnecessary damage.

Taking nasopharyngeal carcinoma as an example, the prognostic survival rate has improved significantly in recent years; however, patients often experience numerous post-treatment side effects. Mild symptoms include dry mouth, dental caries, trismus, and dysphagia, while severe complications may involve hearing loss, deafness, cervical fibrosis, and central nervous system damage, all of which diminish the quality of life among survivors.

There are many reasons for this, with a significant one being the insufficient accuracy in delineating radiation therapy target volumes and surrounding healthy tissues and organs. The nasopharyngeal region features complex anatomy with numerous critical structures; therefore, the precision of delineation critically affects both treatment efficacy and the control of side effects.

Experienced physicians typically spend 2–3 hours solely on delineating tumor target volumes, while junior doctors require even more time, not to mention the additional time spent on contouring surrounding healthy tissues. VisionMed, in collaboration with Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center in Guangzhou, has co-developed an AI-assisted module for delineating target volumes in nasopharyngeal carcinoma. The module achieves a Dice similarity coefficient of over 80% and completes processing within one minute, significantly reducing physicians’ workload, accelerating the delineation process, and improving accuracy.

“Building on the research accumulation of Professor Wang Ping’an’s virtual human, we are further tackling key technical challenges to achieve precise quantification of normal tissues and target areas by integrating human anatomical structures. Our aspiration is that, through Vision Medical’s assisted contouring solutions, patients undergoing radiotherapy can enjoy a prognosis that allows them to live like healthy individuals,” said Chen Hao.

As a multidisciplinary, cross-sector enterprise integrating medicine and artificial intelligence, Shijian Medical places significant emphasis on collaboration and exchange with various companies within the industry. Leveraging its close ties with Lenovo, Shijian Medical rapidly established a strategic partnership with Lenovo Smart Healthcare, utilizing Lenovo’s local expertise to explore market expansion and commercialization opportunities.

Meanwhile, within four months of its establishment, Shijian Medical established market and R&D collaborations with multiple leading PACS vendors, medical device manufacturers, third-party imaging centers, and online telemedicine platforms in the Chinese market.

“In the past two years, numerous companies have emerged in the field of medical artificial intelligence, with many actively exploring viable business models. We believe that a business model must be closely aligned with user needs; only by truly addressing the critical needs and pain points of hospitals, physicians, and patients can a business model establish a solid foundation for growth.”

“Leveraging our technological expertise and accumulated resources, we have rapidly established strategic partnerships with many industry pioneers and partners, and have begun to explore various business model practices. In the future, we welcome more stakeholders across the industry chain, including competitors, to collaborate and engage in dialogue. Together, we strive to translate advanced technologies into genuine clinical and industrial applications, thereby enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of radiologists’ work and enabling patients to receive superior diagnostic and therapeutic services,” said Wang Feng, CEO of Vision Medical Technology.

He Zhiqiang, Senior Vice President of Lenovo Group and President of Lenovo Capital, stated, “The upgrading of traditional healthcare through the intelligent internet is an inevitable trend. Machine intelligence will significantly outperform human decision-making in the medical field, offering greater efficiency and precision. Vision Medical Technology possesses industry-leading AI-assisted healthcare technologies. Its team of technical experts boasts over 20 years of accumulated expertise in computerized medical imaging technology and has established strategic collaborations with multiple top-tier hospitals.”

Visionary Medical Technology was initially discovered and incubated by Lenovo Venture Capital Accelerator. As a strategic investor, we not only recommended several senior executives to the company but also facilitated close collaborations between Visionary Medical Technology and Lenovo’s ecosystem—including Lenovo Big Data, Lenovo Smart Healthcare, and Lenovo Key Accounts—resulting in the development of an integrated hardware and software solution for precise hospital big data. We believe that Visionary Medical Technology has the potential to become an innovator and enabler in China’s healthcare sector.

Source: Internet platforms such as 36Kr and China Venture, compiled by VCBeat.