4DMedical's lung ventilation analysis algorithm has been tested successfully in a pilot study led by Vanderbilt University researchers to detect constrictive bronchiolitis in U.S. military veterans exposed to burn pits overseas.
"We see many Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have lung biopsies showing significant damage, but traditional noninvasive testing appears normal," said principal investigator Dr. Bradley Richmond, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt, in a news release.
Lung scans depicting healthy subjects and lungs of a veteran with biopsy-confirmed constrictive bronchiolitis, as processed by 4DMedical's XV LVAS software. Single slices of fluoroscopic scans from the Vanderbilt "burn pit" clinical trial from a healthy subject (left) and from a veteran exposed to burn pits (right) with biopsy-confirmed constrictive bronchiolitis. The green in the image on the left represents average levels of ventilation, while the image on the right shows significant regions of both low (red) and high (blue) ventilation. Image courtesy of 4DMedical.The company's XV Lung Ventilation Analysis Software (LVAS) is an imaging analysis algorithm that uses standard fluoroscopy to quantify ventilation with sufficient fidelity to identify regional differences. Specific metrics evaluated in the pilot study included measures of ventilation heterogeneity demonstrating shifts in the proportion of ventilation to various regions within the lungs.
Endpoints of the study were compared during tidal breathing and a full exhalation to residual volume from total lung capacity. Published results are forthcoming, Richmond added.
