Siemens Healthineers and ScreenPoint Medical to Develop AI-Based Apps

Siemens Healthineers (Erlangen, Germany) and ScreenPoint Medical (Nijmegen, The Netherlands) have entered into a partnership to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-based applications for breast imaging. As part of the arrangement, Siemens Healthineers will also acquire a strategic minority stake in ScreenPoint Medical.

Siemens Healthineers offers a comprehensive portfolio of breast imaging systems, including ultrasound, mammography and MRI as well as accompanying reading solutions. The company has a wide portfolio of products and services in its core areas of diagnostic and therapeutic imaging and in laboratory diagnostics and molecular medicine. ScreenPoint Medical develops innovative machine learning solutions to improve breast cancer screening and diagnosis. The company has developed the AI system Transpara, which matches the performance of experienced radiologists in detecting breast cancer in screening mammograms.

The partnership between both these companies aims to leverage the expertise of Siemens Healthineers in breast imaging and that of ScreenPoint Medical in mammography decision support to develop innovative clinical applications for breast cancer screening and diagnosis. ScreenPoint Medical’s mammography reading software, Transpara, is available for a variety of mammography systems. It enables clinical decisions support and computer-aided detection for higher reading accuracy. The software has been proven to help radiologists better detect breast cancer with mammography and reduce variations between different users. Transpara has been cleared for clinical use in CE-countries along with the digital mammography and reading portfolio of Siemens Healthineers. Over the coming months, ScreenPoint plans to obtain regulatory approval for Transpara in further clinical applications and countries.

“Together with Siemens Healthineers, we can bring our expertise in AI into the entire screening and diagnostic pathway, starting from risk stratification to image acquisition and diagnosis,” said Professor Nico Karssemeijer, CEO of ScreenPoint Medical.

“The aim of our collaboration with ScreenPoint Medical is to expand precision medicine by providing automated clinical decision support that makes it easier and faster to distinguish between healthy and tumor tissue, thus increasing diagnostic accuracy,” added Dr. Peter Schardt, head of X-ray Products at Siemens Healthineers. “Working with strong partners such as ScreenPoint will help us drive personalized breast care pathways with new applications based on deep learning and artificial intelligence.”