French SME-company DAMAE Medical is facing skin cancer worldwide issue by developing the deepLive™ Project, a new approach to dermatological diagnostic based on a disruptive Line-field Confocal Optical Coherence Tomography (LC-OCT) technology, in a novel hand-held imaging device.
deepLive™ is designed to capture in situ images of the skin layers with a cellular resolution. It is used in conjunction with dermoscopy to provide more accurate diagnosis, leading to fewer biopsies of benign lesions and earlier detection of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers. It may also guide the surgery to provide more accurate presurgical margins, preventing unnecessarily large scars and reducing the risk of recurrence.
Correlatively, DAMAE is developing a full software solution, based on a data storage cloud-platform, a computer-aided software designed to assist dermatologists with deepLive™ image interpretation, as well as telepathology and patient services. deepLive™ device will initially be used by clinicians as a routine easy-handling diagnostic device in public practices. Implementation of deepLive™ software will enable its adoption by a much larger market, consisting of private practices dermatologists. The approach will contribute to the development of skin cancer risk patient awareness, while changing the current paradigm through a timely, performant, and non-invasive approach, and releasing the financial burden on the healthcare system.
Project deepLive™ has successfully completed in 2017 a feasibility phase covered by the SME Instrument Phase 1, resulting in a TRL6 prototype of the technology and a first consolidated atlas of skin cancer clinical images. The main objective of this Phase2 is to scale-up the deepLive™ solution to TRL9 through industrialization activities and by achieving a definitive market assessment, the clinical validation and the regulatory approval, before deploying the approach worldwide.
