TEL AVIV (VINnews)-Israeli startup Hemispheric says it has developed an artificial intelligence system that can diagnose a wide range of neurological and psychiatric conditions through a 15-minute brain-wave test.
The company claims its system, called Descartes, is the first to offer a precise, objective method for measuring and decoding human brain activity. It says the technology can identify conditions including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia risk, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury, obsessive-compulsive disorder, tinnitus, ADHD, sleep disorders and early cognitive decline, while also assessing their severity.
Patients wear a sensor-equipped cap connected to an app and perform tasks on a screen. The process generates data that the company’s AI model analyzes. Founders compare the approach to a blood test or X-ray, providing doctors with an objective tool in a field that has long relied on interviews and questionnaires.
The system is built on a database of 100,000 test subjects and roughly a quarter-million hours of brain-activity data. It contains 6 billion parameters.
Co-founder and CEO Dr. Hagai Lalazar, a computational neuroscientist, and CTO Gidi Littwin, a computer vision expert who helped develop Apple’s Face ID and led hand-tracking work for Vision Pro, founded the company.
Hemispheric employs more than 110 people across three countries and has raised $52 million from venture investors. It operates data-collection sites in Tel Aviv and the Philippines and plans to open new research facilities in Tel Aviv and Boston by the end of September. Together the sites are expected to handle about 85,000 diagnostic tests a year.
The company has presented its system to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health. It plans to submit results from a PTSD clinical trial to the agency as early as next year. Hemispheric has also conducted a pilot study of 122 Israeli combat veterans who served in Gaza to assess PTSD.