Spectral MD presents early results from expanded clinical study

Wound care-focussed predictive analytics company Spectral MD has presented early clinical results from the expanded proof-of-concept multicentre clinical study at three scientific presentations at the Southern Region Burn Conference, it announced on Tuesday, which was held in New Orleans earlier in November.

The AIM-traded firm said the results of the first multicentre study using its burn imaging technology included 124 adult and pediatric participants.

In adult participants, the performance, with cross-validation from the artificial intelligence (AI) model for the identification of non-healing burn regions, showed 92% accuracy, making for an improvement on the previously-reported accuracy of 91% for the ‘DeepView Wound Imaging Solution’ in the early healing assessment of adults.

Spectral MD said that in pediatric patients, the AI performance showed 88% accuracy, underlining how the technology was responding with “significant reliability” to variability in the study population.

Compared to the precise and early healing assessment of Spectral's ‘DeepView’ solution for burn wounds, the current standard of care relied on physicians using a “wait-and-see” approach of up to 21 days to determine the need for surgery.

That, the company said, resulted in a higher probability of infections, additional costs, longer hospital stays and over-excision of viable skin.

The Southern Region Burn Conference was described by the board as “one of the largest” scientific burn conferences held each year, with “hundreds” in attendance.

The company also announced that a study had been published in the Journal of Burn Care and Research, written by Dr Herbert Phelan, titled ‘Use of 816 Consecutive Burn Wound Biopsies to Inform a Histologic Algorithm for Burn Depth Categorization’.

It said the study was originally presented at the 2021 American Burn Association Conference, and detailed the “years of work” performed by Spectral MD and clinical colleagues to characterise burn depth using histologic parameters.

The histologic methods being developed through that research were being applied to the development of DeepView's AI algorithm for burn detection.

“The results not only demonstrate excellent AI performance metrics, they also show the technology is responding well to demographic and geographic variability in the study population,” said chief executive officer Wensheng Fan.

“As such, we have already bolstered our infrastructure to facilitate expansion of the study to additional sites and have begun enrolling in a larger study to complete AI algorithm development.”

Fan said it was an “important milestone” for Spectral MD, marking the start of an “exciting period” where it looked to initiate a publication process concerning the results from its clinical studies in both the burn and DFU indications.

“We look forward to providing further updates from our clinical studies which detail the substantial improvement to the standard of care that DeepView can deliver for burn and DFU patients.”

At 0915 GMT, shares in Spectral MD Holdings were up 4% at 36.4p.