Dr. Erik Dumont, IGT CEO, has a long experience of medical device marketing, gained during his earlier career at Philips Medical Systems, where he was responsible, as a clinical scientist, of all the research partnerships in France. He managed more than ten research projects in France in close collaboration with the company MR development group in Best (The Netherlands). He is a PI in an NIH funded research, in collaboration with the University of Utah, to develop an MRgFUS system optimized for the treatment of breast cancer. He is currently organizing the product launch of an innovative device based on MRgFUS to study mechanisms for targeted drug delivery, targeted gene activation in genetherapy. He is also heading a Eurostars/Eureka project (PROFUS) for the development of an MRgFUS system dedicated to the treatment of prostate cancer. Staff members involved in the project Bruno Crouzevialle, IGT chief electrical engineer, has a long experience in the management of industrial projects. Initially, he worked as Research Engineer at Andrews Corporation where he gained invaluable experience in RF design. Since then, he has managed successfully more than ten projects at IGT. He managed the realization of a phased array focused ultrasound system with 256 channels, totally MR compatible, which is currently used on two important academic sites in pre-clinical studies.
Beneficiary 3
Image Guided Therapy (IGT) is a medical device company located in Pessac (Bordeaux, France). Its main activity is to design, build and commercialize innovative tumor treatment devices. IGT develops patient friendly, non invasive, image guided ablation devices based on focused ultrasound (FUS or HIFU).
The company was founded in 2001, to develop into products, research works done at the university of Bordeaux in the field of MR guided, minimally invasive cancer treatments. IGT has been involved with two main developments : MR guidance for RF ablation procedures and MR guided focused ultrasound ablation devices (MRgFUS).
IGT has grown through the dedication and hard work of a team of highly skilled professionals. They are mechanical engineers, electronic engineers, computer scientists and science PhD's, all focused on providing the clinicians with the safest, most efficient and reliable, MR guided focused ultrasound devices.
In the course of its development, IGT has collaborated with renowned institutions, among which :
- CNRS. The French fundamental research organization
- Université Bordeaux 2
- Institut Bergonié. A renowned medical center specialized in cancer treatment
- Hôpital Universitaire de Genève (HUG), Switzerland
- INSERM. The French organization of health research
- University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA
Tasks IGT is the leader of 3D-US therapy delivery and monitoring (WP5); it is also partner of WPs, 2, 4, 7 and 8 where IGT will collaborate mainly with UNIVDUN and CAMELOT. Main tasks of IGT are related to therapy planning, delivery and monitoring. IGT is also involved in the exploitation phase (WP10), because it has a huge interest in exploring opportunities of USgFUS to complete its portfolio consisting of MRgFUS.
Previous experiences IGT has developed a 256 elements phased array system with its
associated driving electronics for the treatment of mobile organs (such as the liver or the kidneys) in collaboration with the Hospices Civils de Lyon (project MOBILORG). IGT has developed a method to detect organ motions and to adjust in real time the focal spot position and lock it to its target. This method is the object of a patent co-owned between IGT and the CNRS (French research organization, PCT/EP2006/065832).
IGT is also co-investigator in a 2M$, NIH funded project to develop an MRgFUS optimized for breast cancer (ref. R01CA134599-01). IGT currently heads a Eurostars consortium whose objective is the development of an innovative MRgFUS system to treat reliable and efficiently prostate cancer.
People
Dr. Stephanie Hoarau -Recco, IGT software development manager, has a long experience in medical software development (previously at AXS engineering, working on spine modeling). She will be responsible for the software development and validation according to 21 CFR §820.30 regulation (FDA) and ISO 14971:2007 standards for Medical Devices Software Packages.
Dr. Mathieu Ourioux, software engineer, is responsible for the image processing part of FUS treatment guidance, in particular motion detection target tracking.
Dr. Fabien Rabusseau, IGT main mechanical engineer, is developing the ultrasound transducers positioning systems, the transducer probes including their cooling systems and the casing with the membrane to ensure a proper acoustic path to the target.
