NVIDIA: DOCTORS GET INSIDE LOOK AT GUT HEALTH WITH AI-POWERED ENDOSCOPY

From humble beginnings as a university spinoff to an acquisition by the leading global medtech company in its field, Odin Vision has been on an accelerated journey since its founding less than five years ago.

An alum of the NVIDIA Inception program for cutting-edge startups, Odin Vision builds cloud-connected AI software that helps clinicians detect and characterize areas of concern during endoscopy, a procedure where a tiny camera mounted on a tube is inserted into the gastrointestinal tract.

Network-connected devices in the endoscopy room capture and stream real-time video data to the cloud, where powerful NVIDIA GPUs run AI inference. The models’ results are then streamed back to the endoscopy room so that clinicians can see the AI insights overlaid on the live video feed with minimal latency.

In 2022, the startup was acquired by Japanese medtech leader Olympus, which has a 70% global market share in gastrointestinal endoscopic equipment.

Olympus is also collaborating with NVIDIA on Olympus Office Hours, an advisory program that connects Inception startups with the medical device company’s experts, who will offer deep industry expertise and guidance to help the startups build AI solutions in key areas including gastroenterology, urology and surgery.

Eight leading AI startups have joined the inaugural cohort of the program — which is part of the NVIDIA Inception Alliance for Healthcare, an initiative that brings together medical AI startups with NVIDIA and its healthcare industry partners — to help accelerate their product development and go-to-market goals.

An Extra Set of AIs for Clinicians
Around a quarter of precancerous polyps are missed during colonoscopies, a kind of endoscopy procedure that examines the lower digestive tract.

While some are missed because the endoscope doesn’t capture video footage of every angle, others remain undetected by clinicians. That’s where AI can help provide a second set of eyes to support clinical decision-making.

Seamless AI integration into the video feeds that medical professionals view during an endoscopy provides an extra data source that can help doctors detect and remove polyps sooner, helping prevent cancer development.

CADDIE, the company’s AI software for detecting and classifying polyps, has received the CE Mark of regulatory approval in Europe and is deployed across hospitals in the U.K., Spain, Germany, Poland and Italy — with plans for use in the U.S as well.

Odin Vision also has AI software that has received the CE Mark to assist gastroscopy, where doctors inspect the esophagus for signs of throat cancer.

Accelerated Inference for Real-Time Insights
Odin Vision began as a research project by two professors and a PhD student at University College London who were developing AI techniques for polyp detection. In 2019, they teamed with Toth and Odin’s CEO, Peter Mountney, both from Siemens Healthineers, to commercialize their work.

The team uses NVIDIA Tensor Core GPUs for accelerated inference — most recently transitioning to NVIDIA L4 GPUs. Adopting NVIDIA Triton Inference Server software and the NVIDIA TensorRT software development kit enabled them to meet the low-latency threshold needed for real-time video-processing AI applications.

In addition to supporting doctors during specific procedures, Odin Vision plans to develop generative AI models that can automate a first draft of the clinical notes doctors prepare afterward — as well as models that can aggregate data across procedures. These would allow endoscopy teams to review analytics and assess how well a procedure is performed compared to clinical guidelines.

Cloud-Connected Cancer Screening
Membership in NVIDIA Inception provided the Odin Vision team access to technical expertise from NVIDIA and cloud credits through leading cloud service providers. The team found that a cloud-based solution made it easier to push software updates over the air to deployments across hospital customers.