Momentum building at Echometrix

By Judy Newman

Pull a muscle running a marathon? Hurt your shoulder pitching in a softball game? Feel a tingling in your hand after spending too much time on Facebook?
Echometrix wants to help heal your wounds.
The young Fitchburg company is developing technology that will let physicians see, in vivid color, ultrasound images that show soft tissue damage such as a torn Achilles tendon, a rotator cuff injury or a case of carpal tunnel syndrome.
Barbara Israel heads Echometrix. Israel co-founded Platypus Technologies in 2000 and led the nanotechnology business for seven years until it was time to bring in an outside chief executive to guide the company through the next stage. She remains on Platypus’ board of directors.
When Israel was approached to start a company based on the work of UW-Madison orthopedics professors Ray Vanderby and Hirohito Kobayashi in 2007, she jumped at the chance after seeing their discovery.
Here’s why:
If you break a bone, a simple X-ray may be all that’s needed to confirm the fracture and locate it. If you pull a tendon or tear a ligament, though, it won’t show up on an X-ray and can be hard to detect on an ultrasound.
“An athlete will complain of pain and stiffness. In a traditional image, you see nothing,” Israel said. But when Vanderby and Kobayashi applied their software to the ultrasound display, the injury “just popped right out,” Israel said.
Now, thanks to the prize of a one-year lease awarded through the 2008 Governor’s Business Plan Contest, Echometrix occupies space at 5525 Nobel Dr. in the Fitchburg Technology Center, across the road from Platypus. The company, which includes chief operating officer Sam Adams, a former product manager with GE Healthcare, has no paid employees yet. Nathan Miller, a UW-Madison research associate in math, is under contract as a consultant to develop a prototype of the software that will make it faster to use.
And Israel, a New Jersey native and former senior scientist at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine, has become a serial entrepreneur, as well as an adjunct professor at the vet school and at the School of Business Entrepreneurial Residential Learning Community.
Q: What are your goals for Echometrix?
A: Our long-term goal is to work with an ultrasound manufacturer and have our software integrated with the machine. Hopefully, not only the standard-size ultrasound machines but also with a very small, hand-held device. That would really expand the use of the technology and make it affordable for orthopedists, sports trainers, physical therapists involved in rehabilitation, and emergency medical technicians.
Q: What is your timetable for bringing this product to the market?
A: We hope it will be available commercially in 2010. But first, when a prototype is ready, we will hand it off to selected radiologists and ask them: How sensitive is it in uncovering injuries to tendons and ligaments? How is it used most effectively? What features do you need in this device?
We can detect micro tears and inflammation. It’s very encouraging. We think this will be useful not only in identifying soft tissue injuries but also for monitoring rehabilitation and healing, so a doctor will be able to say the patient has healed enough to return to normal activity without risk of another injury.
We also see our product, EchoSoft, as a way to reduce health-care costs. MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging) cost thousands of dollars while an ultrasound costs hundreds of dollars. So we’re looking at a tenfold decrease in price.
Q: How does it work?
A: Like a guitar string, when a tendon stretches, its pitch changes. Through sound, you can identify stress to the tendon. A stretched tendon will reflect more echo on an ultrasound test, which shows up as brightness on the screen.
We’re not changing the ultrasound equipment, but with our software, we can analyze information we haven’t gotten before, and create an image. The technology turns the standard black-and-white ultrasound image to color, and the colors create a stiffness map. Red areas indicate high stiffness, while green or blue is normal.
Q: How is the company financed?
A: So far, the three founders — Kobayashi, Vanderby and I — have been funding the company. We have applied for federal grants and just received a $250,000 technology development loan from the Wisconsin Department of Commerce. It will let us pay our consultant and buy a programmable ultrasound machine that can be used for demonstrations. We also are trying to get outside funds.
Q: Is that particularly difficult right now?
A: It’s hard. The whole economy has made people very, very risk averse. We looked for funding in spring 2008 and there was a lot of interest from venture capital groups. We made presentations to three local angel groups but they wanted clinical (patient) data and we only had animal studies at the time. We may try again in late spring or early summer this year to raise $2 million. I think that would get us to the point of bringing a product to market. First, we will need U.S. Food & Drug Administration approval as a medical assessment tool.
Q: Ultimately, will Echometrix stay in the Madison area?
A: There’s an incredible amount of talent here, especially in the medical device area, in software, hardware and marketing. We don’t intend to become a manufacturing company, though. We will outsource production. At least for the immediate future, we will focus on our strengths.

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