When George Abe, CEO of Cambridge Research & Instrumentation (CRi; Woburn, Massachusetts), first learned that multi-spectral imaging systems made the Cleveland Clinic's Top 10 list of medical innovations for 2009, his first reaction was a smile, he recalled during a phone conversation Tuesday with Medical Device Daily.

Next, Abe made a "quiet follow-up call" to the Cleveland Clinic, he said, to ask, "What does this really mean?"

"To be honest with you, I had not had exposure to the Cleveland Clinic Top 10. Certainly I know the clinic for the great medical institute that it is ... it really came as a surprise," Abe said. "It was something that was unsolicited, so we're working hard with our customers in the market helping them do better science and better medicine and this really came out of the blue."

The Cleveland Clinic unveiled its 3rd annual version of the Top 10 list on the last day of its Medical Innovations Summit last week (Medical Device Daily, Nov. 14, 2008). A panel of Cleveland Clinic physicians and scientists selected the list of breakthrough devices and therapies. Multi-spectral imaging systems ranked fourth on the list.

"We are very honored and grateful that the technology was recognized," Abe said. "We are not a big company; we have about 50 people all dedicated to providing breakthroughs in medical research."

Four major criteria served as the basis for qualifying and selecting Cleveland Clinic's Top 10 Medical Innovations. Nominated innovations were required to: have significant potential for short-term clinical impact, have a high probability of success, be on the market or close to being introduced, and have sufficient data available to support its nomination.

In multispectral imaging, the imaging system is attached to a standard microscope, where researchers can stain up to four proteins using different colors and look at tissue samples with 10 to 30 different wavelengths, allowing for the accumulation of more information than is currently available. This helps researchers to better understand the complicated signaling pathways in cancer cells, and to develop more targeted therapies, which might allow physicians to better personalize treatment for individual patients.

During the recognition presentation, Jennifer Hunt, MD, head of surgical pathology at the Cleveland Clinic, called the technology a "game changer."

She added, "It will take personalized medicine to an entirely new level. This is not a step, but a leap. Being able to analyze multiple markers in a single cell to understand the behavior of actual signaling pathways will significantly aid in disease diagnosis and therapy development."

Multi-spectral imaging as a technology has been around for some time, Abe noted. The government uses it for remote sensing so it can, for example, identify things that are hotter than other things in an image. The agricultural industry uses the technology to measure different states of the health of crops. About five years ago CRi changed its strategy to focus on medical applications, Abe said.

CRi says its Nuance system allows users to monitor more than one event or target at a time. The system produces clear and accurate unmixed images from a multi-label tissue section, whether the tissue is labeled for cellular, nuclear, or membrane markers that overlap spatially or spectrally, according to the company.

"Our Nuance technology is like enabling a color-blind person to see color for the first time," said Clifford Hoyt, chief technology officer. "Among other things, it can be used by both pre-clinical and clinical research scientists to reveal new data to expedite targeted therapies, and by physicians for personalized treatment."

Abe told MDD CRi's products stand out from other multi-spectral imaging systems on the market because its device and related software is more optimized and has more features and capabilities than other systems.

Other companies developing multi-spectral imaging systems include Electro Optical Sciences (EOS; Irvington, New York); Nikon Instruments (Melville, New York); and Amnis (Seattle).