Vida Diagnostics: Founders

FOUNDERS

VIDA is both the word “Life” in Spanish and an acronym representing the core mission of our software “Volumetric Image Display and Analysis.” The initial inspiration for the company began 30 years ago when Dr. Eric Hoffman introduced three-dimensional X-ray imaging techniques for the assessment of the lung, in conjunction with Mayo Clinic's ground-breaking Dynamic Spatial Reconstructor. His vision was to utilize the wealth of density information embedded in three-dimensional radiological images to add quantitative, repeatable diagnostic metrics to the visual interpretation of scan images and to provide the link between structure and function.

Eric Hoffman, Ph.D.

Professor of Radiology, Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Iowa, Dr. Hoffman has been at the forefront of quantitative volumetric imaging of the lung over the past 30 years. He has authored over 200 journal papers in the area of lung imaging and his laboratory has, in addition to its basic research into lung function via imaging, served as the image archive and analysis center of numerous multicenter studies centered on the analysis of lung disease. He founded the SPIE Medical Imaging’s Physiology and Function Conference, is a fellow of AIMBE, a member of the Fleischner Society and is currently the director of the Iowa Comprehensive Lung Imaging Center at the University of Iowa. More >>

Geoffrey McLennan, M.B.,B.S., F.R.A.C.P., Ph.D.

Geoffrey McLennan, M.B.,B.S., F.R.A.C.P., Ph.D. Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Engineering and Radiology at the University of Iowa, Dr. McLennan is a leading pulmonologist and faculty member of the UI College of Medicine. He is head of Interventional Pulmonology at the UI medical center. Dr. McLennan has pioneered the area of computer-assisted bronchoscopy including methods for virtual guidance, in-vivo microscopy. He has served as the chair of the NIH Lung Image Database Consortium, seeking to establish a public database of medical images of lung cancer to ground truth and he is a long standing researcher in emphysema, lung cancer, sarcoidosis and asthma. Dr. McLennan is currently the director of the Iowa Institute of Biomedical Imaging. More >>

Joseph M. Reinhardt, Ph.D.

Joseph M. Reinhardt, Ph.D. Dr. Reinhardt is a Professor and Chair of Biomedical Engineering at The University of Iowa. Dr. Reinhardt's teaching and research interests are in the areas of image segmentation, registration, and medical image analysis and more recently in the area of lung mechanics as assessed from CT image data. Dr. Reinhardt was the chairman of the SPIE Medical Imaging Image Processing Conference from 2004 to 2008, is a senior member of the IEEE, and a fellow of the AIMBE. More >>

Milan Sonka, Ph.D.

Milan Sonka, Ph.D. Dr. Sonka is a professor and chair of electrical and computer engineering, ophthalmology and visual sciences, and radiation oncology, as well as co-director of Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging at the University of Iowa. He has co-authored three editions of a widely-used textbook Image Processing, Analysis, and Machine Vision, and a Handbook of Medical Imaging: Volume 2 – Medical Image Processing and Analysis. Dr. Sonka is a well-known scholar in the area of quantitative medical image analysis with a record of successful commercialization of his cardiovascular and pulmonary image analysis methods and approaches. Dr. Sonka is the co-director of the Iowa Institute of Biomedical imaging. More >>

John Garber

John Garber, Chief Executive Officer Most recently Vice President of e-Commerce at PepsiCo, Mr. Garber is an experienced entrepreneur and general manager. As original Chief Operating Officer of Click Commerce, now a division of Illinois Tool Works, Garber directed the development of the product, sales and professional services organizations that successfully serve many of the world’s largest manufacturing organizations with channel management software. Under his leadership, Click experienced enormous licensing and revenue per license growth and expansion to several new vertical markets. Prior to Click, he played key product management and sales roles in Motorola’s iDEN brand cellular networks business and was a pioneer of structured product management methods while at Motorola. Mr. Garber holds an MBA from University of Chicago.


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FOUNDERS VIDA is both the word “Life” in Spanish and an acronym representing the core mission of our software “Volumetric Image Display and Analysis.” The initial inspiration for the company began 30 years ago when Dr. Eric Hoffman introduced three-dimensional X-ray imaging techniques for the assessment of the lung, in conjunction with Mayo Clinic's ground-breaking Dynamic Spatial Reconstructor. His vision was to utilize the wealth of density information embedded in three-dimensional radiological images to add quantitative, repeatable diagnostic metrics to the visual interpretation of scan images and to provide the link between structure and function. Eric Hoffman, Ph.D. Professor of Radiology, Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Iowa, Dr. Hoffman has been at the forefront of quantitative volumetric imaging of the lung over the past 30 years. He has authored over 200 journal papers in the area of lung imaging and his laboratory has, in addition to its basic research into lung function via imaging, served as the image archive and analysis center of numerous multicenter studies centered on the analysis of lung disease. He founded the SPIE Medical Imaging’s Physiology and Function Conference, is a fellow of AIMBE, a member of the Fleischner Society and is currently the director of the Iowa Comprehensive Lung Imaging Center at the University of Iowa. More >> Geoffrey McLennan, M.B.,B.S., F.R.A.C.P., Ph.D. Professor of Medicine, Biomedical Engineering and Radiology at the University of Iowa, Dr. McLennan is a leading pulmonologist and faculty member of the UI College of Medicine. He is head of Interventional Pulmonology at the UI medical center. Dr. McLennan has pioneered the area of computer-assisted bronchoscopy including methods for virtual guidance, in-vivo microscopy. He has served as the chair of the NIH Lung Image Database Consortium, seeking to establish a public database of medical images of lung cancer to ground truth and he is a long standing researcher in emphysema, lung cancer, sarcoidosis and asthma. Dr. McLennan is currently the director of the Iowa Institute of Biomedical Imaging. More >> Joseph M. Reinhardt, Ph.D. Dr. Reinhardt is a Professor and Chair of Biomedical Engineering at The University of Iowa. Dr. Reinhardt's teaching and research interests are in the areas of image segmentation, registration, and medical image analysis and more recently in the area of lung mechanics as assessed from CT image data. Dr. Reinhardt was the chairman of the SPIE Medical Imaging Image Processing Conference from 2004 to 2008, is a senior member of the IEEE, and a fellow of the AIMBE. More >> Milan Sonka, Ph.D. Dr. Sonka is a professor and chair of electrical and computer engineering, ophthalmology and visual sciences, and radiation oncology, as well as co-director of Iowa Institute for Biomedical Imaging at the University of Iowa. He has co-authored three editions of a widely-used textbook Image Processing, Analysis, and Machine Vision, and a Handbook of Medical Imaging: Volume 2 – Medical Image Processing and Analysis. Dr. Sonka is a well-known scholar in the area of quantitative medical image analysis with a record of successful commercialization of his cardiovascular and pulmonary image analysis methods and approaches. Dr. Sonka is the co-director of the Iowa Institute of Biomedical imaging. More >> John Garber Most recently Vice President of e-Commerce at PepsiCo, Mr. Garber is an experienced entrepreneur and general manager. As original Chief Operating Officer of Click Commerce, now a division of Illinois Tool Works, Garber directed the development of the product, sales and professional services organizations that successfully serve many of the world’s largest manufacturing organizations with channel management software. Under his leadership, Click experienced enormous licensing and revenue per license growth and expansion to several new vertical markets. Prior to Click, he played key product management and sales roles in Motorola’s iDEN brand cellular networks business and was a pioneer of structured product management methods while at Motorola. Mr. Garber holds an MBA from University of Chicago.	1979 – Dr. Eric Hoffman and colleagues develop three-dimensional X-ray imaging techniques for the assessment of the heart and lungs at the Mayo Clinic’s ground breaking Dynamic Spatial Reconstructor. 1987 – As director of the Cardiothoracic Imaging Research Center in the Department of Radiology of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Hoffman and his team of engineers and computer scientists introduce an integrated software package known as VIDA for the display and analysis of multi-dimensional imaging data sets derived from x-ray CT and magnetic resonance imaging. (Joseph Reinhardt and Susan Wood collaborated closely with the team, as graduate students at Penn State and Johns Hopkins University respectively) 1992 – Dr. Hoffman moves to the University of Iowa, forms a very early start-up company known as VIDA Technologies, and begins to collaborate with VIDA Diagnostic’s other co-founders, Dr. Junfeng Guo joins Dr. Hoffman and colleagues to evolve the general purpose image display and analysis software, VIDA, into a pulmonary dedicated package (Pulmonary Analysis Software Suite: PASS) motivated in part by the needs of the NIH sponsored National Emphysema Treatment Trial. 2004 – Drs, Geoffrey McLennan, Milan Sonka, and Joseph Reinhardt join Dr. Hoffman as co-founders of a re-organized company dedicated to clinical applications of lung imaging and VIDA receives its first seed stage funding and hires John Garber as CEO and Juerg Tschirren, PhD as director of engineering. - Based upon PASS, VIDA’s first product is launched, the Emphysema Profiler, the world’s first commercial, automatic whole-lung densitometer. 2005 - The Iowa Comprehensive Lung Imaging Center (I-CLIC), a one-of-a-kind facility dedicated to lung imaging and lung function research, is established - VIDA Diagnostics receives an SBIR grant and launchs its second product, the Pulmonary Workstation. - VIDA sells its first investigational system to the University of Innsbruck in Austria. 2006 - VIDA consolidates its previous applications, PASS Emphysema Profiler and Pulmonary Workstation. - VIDA recieves recognition as Outstanding Start-up Company of 2006 by the Technology Association of Iowa. 2008 - VIDA obtains FDA 510(k) approval on the the Pulmonary Workstation 2 (PW2) software.
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