AVATAR MEDICAL, rewarded for its virtual reality medical imaging solution

Facilitate surgical interventions by offering medical teams a virtual reality solution that allows them to visualize and interact with the patient's 3D medical images? This is the ambition of AVATAR MEDICAL since its creation in 2020 by a team of French scientists and Franco-American entrepreneurs. Its technology is based on four years of research in human-data interaction and machine learning conducted at Institut Pasteur and Institut Curie by Jean-Baptiste Masson, Mohamed El Beheiry and the late Maxime Dahan. The MedTech has benefited from the support of its founding institutions, through Institut Curie's start-up incubation program and the Pasteur Innovation Accelerator.

After receiving the i-Lab award^[2] in 2020, AVATAR MEDICAL has once again been rewarded for its particularly innovative technology. The company has just been announced as the winner of the 7th edition of the i-Nov national innovation competition[3], among 73 projects selected from more than 270 initial applications. Organized by the French government in partnership with Bpifrance and the ADEME as part of France 2030, the i-Nov competition aims to support the growth of start-ups whose innovation projects represent a particularly strong potential for the French economy, in order to encourage the emergence of companies that are leaders in their field and can aspire to a global reach. At stake: a total of €45.8 million in grants to the winners.

By choosing to collaborate since its inception with surgeons and radiologists, including teams from Institut Curie, AVATAR MEDICAL has succeeded in developing a technology that represents a paradigm shift in the way specialists use medical images. How? The company uses virtual reality and Bayesian approaches[1] to generate 3D representations of patients. This is an unprecedented solution for doctors who can now go beyond a simple 2D visualization and have access, with precision and in real time, to a better representation of the area to be operated on, considerably simplifying the preparation of the most complex surgical procedures.

We are particularly proud of this i-Nov accreditation, which rewards the excellence of our researchers' work and the quality of start-up incubation at Institut Curie. The success of AVATAR MEDICAL, a MedTech created by combining the expertise of Institut Curie and Institut Pasteur with the support of PSL University, is a perfect example of the benefits of combining academic research with technological and digital advances for optimal and comprehensive patient care.

said Dr. Cécile Campagne, Director of Institut Curie’s Technology Transfer Office and Deputy Director of Carnot Curie Cancer.

In November 2021, Institut Curie became the first hospital in the world to acquire this state-of-the-art visualization solution. This significant new financial support will enable AVATAR MEDICAL to make its unique technology actionable to all stakeholders of the patient care: radiologists, surgeons, oncologists, and even patients who will be able to better understand their operations.

Bringing our visualization technology to other Medtechs is at the heart of our strategy and the i-Nov prize will greatly contribute to this. We warmly thank Bpifrance for this new support to AVATAR MEDICAL.

says Xavier Wartelle, CEO of AVATAR MEDICAL.

[1] Statistical approach based on Bayesian inference, where the probability expresses a degree of belief in an event.

[2] The i-Lab competition promotes the results of French research through the creation of companies with innovative technologies. It supports the best projects through coaching and financial aid.

[3] The i-Nov competition is one of the three complementary components of the "Innovation Competitions", alongside the i-PhD and i-Lab competitions.