AVATAR MEDICAL, a spin-off of the Institut Pasteur and Institut Curie, has raised €1.2 million ($1.4 million) in pre-seed funding from investors including the Institut Pasteur to radically transform the preparation of breast cancer surgery.

Founded in July 2020 by a team of French scientists and Franco-American entrepreneurs, AVATAR MEDICAL’s technology is based on four years of research in human-data interaction and machine learning conducted at the Institut Pasteur and Institut Curie. From its inception, the company has operated in France and in the US. 

AVATAR MEDICAL is particularly useful for understanding complex morphologies and promises to help avoid mastectomies, shorten operating times on aneurysms and inform operating decisions for complex fractures. AVATAR MEDICAL’s technology instantly generates interactive 3D representations of patients based on standard medical images in an immersive virtual reality context.

“Our mission is to unlock the power of medical images and make them actionable to surgeons, students but also patients,” says Xavier Wartelle, CEO of AVATAR MEDICAL. “We have an outstanding team of surgeons and radiologists working hand-in-hand with us. Some of them are now shareholders and that speaks for itself, ” he added.     

“I was blown away by the fluidity of the interactions I could have with 3D representations of medical images through virtual reality. It’s a real game-changer because I can now see a complete knee in the blink of an eye to prepare my surgeries or explain them to my patients, “ said Dr. Greg Sarin, an orthopedic surgeon in Colorado and investor in AVATAR MEDICAL.