Small Bedford firm develops 3-D medical-imaging process
Advances may have wider uses in time
BEDFORD -- Like many small companies, Actuality Systems Inc. got its start in an austere setting. But it wasn't any old widget that founder Gregg Favalora of Arlington was working on in the late 1990s in an apartment in Cambridge's Central Square.
He was developing complex, three-dimensional technology systems that would bring alive applications in industries as diverse as medicine and oil-and-gas exploration.
Favalora knew he was on the right track in 2000 when he secured the first seed money from what would evolve into a group of several large private investors, and a venture capital firm, Navigator Technology Ventures of Cambridge.
''That initial investment enabled us to create the world's most advanced 3-D display in a year and a half," said Favalora, 31, the company's chief technology officer who has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Yale and a master's degree in engineering sciences from Harvard.
To date, the Bedford company, which had its first full-fledged offices in Reading, has raised more than $12 million from these investors.
But it is still a very small company, with 12 employees and annual revenue of less than $1 million, derived mostly from research-related activities such as those for the oil-and-gas exploration industry. For example, Houston-based
Yet, Actuality Systems is poised for some breakthroughs in medical imaging, advances that could result at some point in the company being acquired by a large medical device manufacturer, according to Favalora and Michael W. Goldstein, 47, chief executive since last May.
Goldstein, who lives in Ipswich, previously was president of iFire Technologies Inc., a publicly traded manufacturer of flat-panel displays in Canada. He received a bachelor's degree in engineering from the University of Southern Illinois and a master's degree in business administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Actuality is now working with Philips Medical Systems of Madison, Wis., on dovetailing an Actuality visualization platform with a Philips system.
At the core of Actuality's technologies are prototype computer hardware and software systems that yield free-floating color images in a 3-D format. The images appear to hover within a small, desktop dome.
Backing up these technologies are 10 patents assigned to the company, with an additional 20 pending, in fields ranging from 3-D display optics to high-bandwidth electronics.
''What you're really seeing is data floating into space," Goldstein said as he showed a visitor last week how the technologies work for medical applications. A spinal cord tumor was visible from every angle within the dome.
''Light hits a spinning screen" in the center of the dome that permits a subject to be seen from any viewpoint, Favalora said.
In healthcare, these technologies are designed to give doctors a more detailed view of 3-D CAT scans, which until now were typically viewed on flat-screen computer monitors, Favalora said. Actuality is collaborating with major medical centers, including Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston and Rhode Island Medical Center in Providence, on preclinical trials.
Another potentially huge market, Goldstein said, is consumer video games, which would be served by Actuality's so-called holovideo technology. ''We're in the engineering phase currently, and by the end of this year, we'll make a desktop prototype."
But the company's sights, for now, are on the healthcare arena.
The first preclinical trial was conducted last year at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. The purpose was to explore the benefits of Actuality's technologies for radiation oncology, using patient data. The results revealed ''improved accuracy and efficiency for visualizing and treating tumors in radiation therapy," Goldstein said.
The second preclinical trial is expected to begin in two months, and will include Rush University Medical as well as Tufts-New England and Rhode Island Medical Centers. This research will build on the Rush Medical data, Goldstein said.
''We'll be trying to determine how effective [Actuality Systems] technologies are, in terms of identifying organs targeted for radiation therapies," said Mark J. Rivard, chief medical physicist for Tufts-New England.
Of course, Actuality Systems has competitors at every turn. But, according to Favalora, the Bedford company provides ''the entire system that solves problems rather than just the display components."
''It's like comparing a spark plug manufacturer to a car company."
