Scherp beeld voor betere behandeling van coronaire hartziekten

Innovative intravascular catheter

Current imaging technology can visualise the structure of the vessel wall with high accuracy but falls short in characterising plaque composition: precisely the information that determines which plaques are about to rupture. Rotterdam-based medtech company Kaminari Medical is developing an intravascular catheter that combines ultrasound and photoacoustics in a single device, the One & Done System. Photoacoustic imaging enables direct, molecularly specific detection of plaque lipids. Our sensor covers a wide frequency range that in principle contains detailed information about the quantity, location and nature of lipid in the vessel wall. Unlocking that information, however, requires advanced signal processing that does not yet exist.

A robust signal processing pipeline

In the BB-CAD project, Kaminari Medical and the Erasmus MC Thorax Center jointly develop a broadband signal processing pipeline that converts the raw photoacoustic signal into quantitative, clinically interpretable plaque characterisation. The approach combines physics-informed AI modelling with histological validation on a large collection of human coronary tissue at the specialised CVPath Institute in the United States. The project runs over a period of 24 months and connects directly to Kaminari Medical's commercial product roadmap: the results will be integrated into the operational software platform of the One & Done System by mid-2028.

Dutch innovation, global impact

BB-CAD is funded by Holland High Tech under the MKB Hightech call 2025, innovation domain Imaging Technologies. The project represents a public-private collaboration between an innovative Dutch medtech company and a world-class academic medical centre, targeting a technological breakthrough with the potential to prevent hundreds of thousands of unnecessary repeat interventions each year.