FDA grants approval for newest version of OnGuard Chest X-ray CAD technology

Jun 22 2010

Riverain Medical® announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted approval for the newest version of the OnGuard™ Chest X-ray Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) technology. OnGuard identifies solitary pulmonary nodules that may represent early-stage lung cancer on an existing chest X-ray. This improved performance demonstrates a 73% reduction in false positive marks and 50% higher relative sensitivity compared to the original product.

More than 200,000 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer this year. Only a small percentage of these patients will be diagnosed with lung cancer in the earliest stages when it is most treatable. When lung cancer is detected early, five-year survival rates triple. Multiple studies demonstrate that OnGuard can detect 37-50% of lung cancers that were missed in the initial interpretation.

"Our published studies demonstrate that OnGuard can detect up to 50% of the lung cancers that were missed in the initial interpretation," says Dr. Charles White, Professor and Vice Chairman of Radiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "OnGuard provides physicians with a tool to help identify suspicious nodules in the lungs earlier."

OnGuard uses pattern recognition and machine learning technology to detect nodules. Well centered, scaled markers are then placed around regions of interest that may be early-stage lung cancer. Because OnGuard utilizes the existing digital chest X-ray, there is no additional radiation dose, patient procedure, hardware or stand-alone workstation needed to integrate the technology into any radiology department.

"OnGuard can make a difference in the fight against lung cancer," explains Diane Hirakawa, CEO and Chairman of Riverain Medical. "This technology can improve the detection of lung cancer in its earliest stages when treatments are most effective."