Grand plan
Ryan Zhang
CEO & Founder 2019
Years later, when I am sitting in a coffee shop in the Wudaokou around
Tsinghua Science Park. still I remember my instructor, Jan-Jakob
Sonke, showed me the first piece of image of a patient with lung
cancer.
Since then, I have begun to look at the progress of medical technology
with a vision of information technology, from the principles of
tumors, the evolution of data, clinical processes, to the use of
innovative mathematical tools to optimize the practice of tumor
radiotherapy. After a long period of time, I was constantly thinking
about how to use information technology to create a scalable treatment
for cancer until I founded LinkingMed. LinkingMed started from a
informationization project, seemingly mediocre. Gradually we
accumulated radiotherapy-related target auto-contouring, dose
calculation and radiotherapy optimization and other core technologies
based on AI, forming a complete product line, also the
RT-Viewer-contour obtained the NMPA III medical device registration
license.
Since its establishment, LinkingMed has won four rounds of investment,
and we have formed a complete product based AI technology focused in
the field of tumor radiotherapy. Many friends and colleagues are
paying more attention to the next step when they send me
congratulations. What is the value and vision of LinkingMed in a
long-term way?
To answer this question, I must put the core technology of LinkingMed
into a broader time.
In 1896, Chicago, the medical student of the Naiman Medical School,
Emil Grubbe, first used X-ray to cure a breast cancer patient called
Rose Lee, and this moment is the starting point of radiotherapy with a
history of a hundred years.
From the point of view of prescription doses, after the development of
radiobiology from the early 1900s to the 1930s, French biologist
Claudius Regaud found a standard fractionated radiotherapy treatment
plan, which is lasting for 6 weeks, 2.0 Gy/day and 5 consecutive days
a week. Until the end of the 1900s, Professor Henric Blomgren
increased the dose of a single treatment to 7.7-30 G / day, marking a
new era of Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT). Recently,
Professor Zhang Yujiao's latest research has further proved that early
operable patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) early
surgically treated by SBRT have higher survival rate and fewer side
effects than surgery.
In addition, the radiotherapy control technology itself has undergone
tremendous progress. In the early general radiotherapy, the doctor
directly contoured the target area on the film, and then made a lead
block for radiotherapy. Later, the Multi Leaf Collimator (MLC) was
introduced to form a three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy.
Finally, the technique of intensifying radiotherapy (IMRT) was used to
accurately project the radiation into the tumor area while avoiding
any hurt to normal organs.
Accurate radiotherapy is inseparable from the precise guidance of the
ray, and Image Guided Radiotherapy (IGRT) technology continues to
improve the precision of the ray in radiotherapy. As early as the
1980s, Professor VanHerk achieved image-guided radiotherapy through
orthogonal digital radiography. Professor Jaffery developed a cone
beam-based tomography system for the guidance of radiotherapy, which
is a good way to achieve three-dimensional imaging and improve the
accuracy of radiotherapy. In the last decade, NMR-guided medical
linear accelerators have entered the clinic, enabling high-definition
imaging of soft tissue and real-time image guidance.
In general, in the past 100 years of radiotherapy, we have constructed
a complete set of clinical processes and matching industrial systems
from the aspects of cognition, controlling and guidance of the ray. A
standard radiotherapy procedure includes steps such as patient
registration, simulated positioning, organ cntouring, radiotherapy
planning, quality control, treatment implementation, and follow-up
tracking. The development opportunity of linkingMed is to replace the
mechanical behavior of people in the whole process through subversive
AI technology, and improve the quality and efficiency of the
treatment.
Our goal is to create innovative clinical processes based on AI
technology that ultimately form a highly automated radiotherapy system
and a totally new radiotherapy scene.
Imagine that one day in 2025, when the patient enters the new
radiotherapy scene, the AI system will automatically identify the
patient and match the relevant clinical data to guide the patient to
the appropriate position. The treatment device will directly capture
the patient's current image and send the image to the radiotherapy
planning center 1000 km away. The AI system of the radiotherapy center
will automatically process and generate a treatment plan that can be
executed, and will be approved by the doctor on duty that day. Then
the treatment plan is passed back to the device for treatment, and the
real-time imaging system adjusts the precise execution of the
radiotherapy vision based on the patient's respiratory motion.
Achieving the above scenario will bring about a series of changes in
the entire radiotherapy industry:
1· Traditionally, the importance of analog positioning based on CT/MR
is reduced;
2· The work of the doser to plan the design will be replaced by
artificial intelligence;
3· The threshold for the development of radiotherapy plans is reduced,
and the core competence of radiotherapy doctors is shifted from target
area and prescription to comprehensive treatment combined with other
treatment methods;
4· Due to better use of stereotactic radiotherapy, the treatment is
reduced from seven weeks to seven days, and patient comfort is
increased;
5· The entire solution, highly standardized and scaled;
Our vision is determined to become an AI company with absolute leading
position in the field of cancer radiotherapy. And our mission is to
make AI for the benefit of humanlity and to achieve safer and more
efficient radiation therapy for cancer.
First Stage
Fully Auto-Plan
Fully automated generation of radiotherapy treatment plan from
image data based on underlying data.
Second Stage
Online Auto-Plan
Totally generating a real-time radiotherapy treatment plan based
on AI.
Third Stage
Real-time Delivery
Compare real-time image data with treatment plan to perfectly
perform radiation therapy.
While at the same time promoting the standardization of radiotherapy
AI technology.
This is the grand picture of linkingMed!
