Israeli Medical Holography Firm Raises $10M For 3D in-Air Hologram System

By NoCamels Team July 26, 2020 2 minutes

HOLOSCOPE-i is an over-the-head holographic system by RealView Imaging that creates digital 3D holograms in the physician's hand. Photo: RealView Imaging

Israeli medical firm RealView Imaging raised $10 million in a Series C financing round, the company announced last week. New investors included Israeli crowdfunding platform OurCrowd, tech and medical entrepreneurs Drs. Judith and Kobi Richter, as well as leading physicians. A majority of the company’s existing shareholders also participated in this round, including leading Israeli medical entrepreneur Dr. Shimon Eckhouse, who has founded over two dozen startups, Zohar Gilon and Uzia Galil.

Dr. Kobi Richter, founder and chairman of Medinol, and Professor Michael Eldar, former director of the Cardiology Institute at Sheba Medical Center, joined the company’s Board of Directors as part of this closing.

RealView imaging was founded in 2008 by Aviad Kaufman, Shaul Gelman and Professor Carmel Rotschild, with a seed investment led by Dr. Eckhouse. The company went on to develop the HOLOSCOPE-i, the world’s first medical holographic system that provides realistic, spatially accurate 3D in-air holograms. The HOLOSCOPE-i is designed to enable physicians to view and directly interact with hyper-realistic 3D holograms of the patient’s actual anatomy during interventional procedures.

The tech was used in the first live medical procedure at the Toronto General Hospital’s Peter Munk Cardiac Centre (PMCC) last year where cardiologists and cardiac surgeons performed a minimally invasive procedure to replace a worn-out surgical valve.

RealView Imaging has 21 registered patents and another 14 pending according to a press statement from the company.

With a focus on developing medical holography for multiple clinical applications, RealView Imaging is working on its next product, the HOLOSCOPE-x, which it says will “project 3D holographic images inside the patient’s body, making the patient literally transparent.” The product is designed to enable precise minimally invasive interventional procedures, RealView Imaging says.

“RealView has created a unique solution that will address fundamental usability requirements and a wide range of clinical needs for advanced imaging,” said Dr. Richter in the statement. “Given the company’s broad IP portfolio and technology maturity, I believe RealView can significantly impact the growing field of structural heart interventions, as well as additional future clinical fields such as electrophysiology and interventional oncology procedures. All these fields strongly rely on advanced 3D imaging technologies that will guide the physician accurately and clearly in his intervention in patient’s spaces that are not visible to his eyes.”

Dr. Eckhouse said the company was now focused on commercializing the HOLOSCOP-i system, initially in North America and in Europe. “By incorporating medical holography into routine clinical workflow, we expect to revolutionize the way clinicians engage with 3D medical imaging,” he said.