Perimeter Medical Imaging (PINK.V) has made significant progress towards its ATLAS artificial intelligence (AI) project. The Company’s proprietary “ImgAssist” AI technology has officially been trained with over 400 volumes of images of excised breast tissue.

“We are pleased to reach this important milestone within our ATLAS AI project, having achieved these exciting results with our proprietary AI algorithm. We are driven by our belief that Perimeter’s novel imaging platform with AI has the potential to transform cancer surgery and reduce costs in the healthcare system,” stated Jeremy Sobotta, Perimeter’s Chief Executive Officer.

Perimeter’s ATLAS AI project was initially announced on July 15, 2020 and is intended to train the Company’s ImgAssist AI technology to help surgeons identify the presence of cancer in real-time during breast-conserving surgery. The study was made possible in part due to a $7.4 million grant awarded by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. The ATLAS project is divided into various stages and Perimeter’s ImgAssist has just passed the project’s first stage. While the first stage involves training the AI technology with volumes of images, the second stage is focused on testing Perimeter’s AI algorithm. In the projects final stage, Perimeter’s AI technology will be assessed and compared to current standards of care.

With this in mind, Perimeter’s proprietary algorithm has achieved key sensitivity and specificity benchmarks, including an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.94. The closer an AUC is to the value of 1.0, the higher level of separability it has. With an AUC of 0.94, Perimeter’s algorithm is extremely capable of differentiating between suspicious and non-suspicious breast tissue areas. The ATLAS project will now progress to the second stage which involves evaluating clinician performance while using ImgAssist technology to interpret images from breast-conserving surgeries.

As the ATLAS project progresses, it may be worth keeping an eye on Perimeter. Once it becomes commercialized, Perimeter plans to integrate ImgAssist into its OTIS™ technology, the Company real-time imaging system. Ultimately, Perimeter hopes its ImgAssist technology will become a streamlined tool that will revolutionize breast cancer surgery. Whether this comes to fruition or not will depend on the success of the ATLAS project and the interest it generates.

Perimeter’s share price opened at $4.05 today and is currently up to $4.08 as of 2:30PM ET.

Disclaimer: Perimeter is a client of Equity Guru.