PERTH: MyFiziq Limited has developed an extension to its scanning technology into body surface area (BSA) calculation, and other serial measurements, to assist with oncology therapy decisions and prevention measures.

MyFiziq’s Chief Science Officer, Dr Amar El-Sallam, has been working on a number of new and innovative measurements to be included into the Company’s patented application as it navigates further use cases that can dramatically impact existing and new sectors the Company is working in.

Specialist oncology physicians use BSA based dosing as a useful way to mitigate patient size variation in medication regimens. Using BSA can help prescriber’s dose more optimally to improve drug efficacy, minimize drug toxicity, and account for some changes in pharmacokinetics depending on patient factor.

The ability to determine BSA accurately from a mobile device would be a significant step forward in assessing these calculations when working with cancer patients. Having identified this potential target market, the Company has been successfully testing a BSA measurement module and additional oncology-specific modules extensions to its existing technology and expects to commence trials with real subjects over the next 60 days.

The Company is working with medical doctor and oncology researcher, Dr Kate Barrett, MD to fully understand the best approaches in areas of clinical oncology–both in-hospital and through telemedicine. Dr Barrett will be the first oncologist to be given access to the new technology for closed trials and assessment.

Dr Amar El-Sallam said: “MyFiziq has collected one of the world’s largest human shape and medical / body composition image libraries with over 7000 human subjects from Australia and around the world. I have used this deep and diverse data set to train and validate our accuracy in readiness for external review. This panoptic data set has afforded MyFiziq a unique opportunity to further develop its patented state of the art machine learning models to achieve highly accurate body shape and composition measurements. I have used this library when training our machine learning algorithm in conjunction with our unique dimensioning capabilities, whilst extending our technology into BSA.

“Unlike existing BSA methods, the average accuracy achieved at MyFiziq for BSA alone is 97% with a repeatability of 97% across all body shapes, this will have significant impact in the area of clinical ecology. This is a significate step forward for the company and clinicians using BSA. I will be looking to expand the use case of our technology, as BSA is also used to provide more precise measures of hemodynamic parameters such as cardiac index, stroke volume index, systemic vascular resistance index and pulmonary vascular resistance index. In addition, BSA is used to adjust creatinine clearance when comparing it with normal values to assess for the presence and severity of kidney disease. All of these indications add a further layer of depth to the company’s IP and global importance.”

Dr Kate Barrett said: “Up to 80% of individuals with advanced cancer undergo weight loss and wasting–the signs and symptoms of which are seen as prognostic paraments in cancer patients. The ability to make accurate and consistent evaluations through a handheld device will simplify the process on several levels in clinical and preventative medicine. Not only will it be easier to track and document BSA calculations for chemotherapies, pain medications, and other supportive drugs across the healthcare team, it will enable an improved visualization of individual trends such that we can prevent and support concerning changes readily. Further, cumulative data collected both on-and off-trial will enable physicians and researchers to identify trends, collaborate on intervention, and adapt accordingly. Improving the analytics of body measurements, particularly given the dynamic nature that exists in the highly-diverse cancer population, allows for an opportunity to optimize ‘virtually deployable anywhere’ technology to further understand physiological changes for that individual cancer patient, and ultimately the predicative / preventative power in therapeutics.”