NIH awards DoseOptics $1.4 Million for Radiation Therapy Imaging

DoseOptics LLC announced today that the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded the company two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants totaling more than $1.4 million. The early stage start-up is developing novel technology capable of real time imaging of radiation therapy to cancer patients during treatment.

The company was founded to translate discoveries made through a collaborative effort between Thayer School of Engineering and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in the areas of cancer imaging and therapy. The funding will be used to develop prototypes for human imaging and clinical instrument calibration. These systems capture the low-intensity emissions of Čerenkov light coming from radiation interacting with tissue, and use specialized triggering and image processing to remove background signals. The resulting images are a unique way to visualize radiation dose delivery to tissue, a capability pioneered by researchers Dartmouth.

With help from the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network, DoseOptics has exclusively licensed the technology from the college to continue the commercial prototyping of radiation dose imaging. The NIH grants will support the initial set up, testing and early phase clinical trials to be contracted to Radiation Oncology at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock.

DoseOptics was founded by Thayer alumni, William Ware MS Th’94 (CEO), and Dartmouth engineering professors Brian Pogue (President) and Scott Davis Th’06 (Managing Member). Engineering professor Venkat Krishnaswamy has been engaged as the VP of Technology. The company is located at the Dartmouth Regional Technology Center in Centerra Park, Lebanon NH.