Computational biologist David Nguyen, PhD, invented an algorithm that looks at MRI images of the brain in a new way, measuring shape instead of area and volume. Now he’s teamed up with collaborators Harini Kumar and Van Pham to deploy the breakthrough technology for the early detection and monitoring of a host of brain conditions, from ADHD to schizophrenia.

It’s hard to go a week without seeing a headline about the Mental Health crisis we face today. Depression and anxiety are on the rise across nearly every demographic and millions of people struggle with complex mental illnesses like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and autism.

Part of the crisis is a provider shortage; there just aren’t enough mental health professionals, especially in rural regions. Telemedicine companies have stepped up in an attempt to bridge this gap, and now companies like Valera, Hurdle, and Journey — among others — offer virtual therapy that greatly expands access to care.

And yet, an upstream problem remains. Diagnosing psychiatric conditions takes way too long and is subject to a lot of human error. For schizophrenia, for instance, it can take six months of meetings, assessments, and waiting to finally get to a diagnosis. Diagnosing Alzheimer’s, too, is time consuming and subjective.

And diagnosis is just step one. Then comes the arduous and sometimes painful process of medication titration. This involves testing drugs and doses to see what works best for the patient, which means even more meetings and assessments and waiting. That whole time the mental health condition is throwing the patient’s life into disarray.

What if there was a faster, more accurate way to diagnose and assess mental health conditions? What if, instead of waiting months to see how your brain was responding to a new medication, you could wait a single day? What if you could quickly and easily get an annual assessment for Alzheimer’s because you know it runs in your family?

This is precisely what David Nguyen, PhD, and his team at BrainScanology are creating. With their novel algorithm that reads MRIs of the brain in a whole new way, they’re able to bring clarity to mental health diagnoses within 24 hours. They’re starting with Alzheimer’s disease, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism, and ADHD, but their patented technology has broad and exciting potential.

Origin Story

For David Nguyen, it can feel like all the pieces for his life and work, small and large, triumphant and tragic, have led to BrainScanology. As with many health innovators, the hardest parts of his story became his greatest inspiration. In grad school, while studying to become a computational biologist, Nguyen fell into such a depression that he had thoughts of ending his life. Thankfully he was able to find a therapist and get on a medication that worked for him, but it was a long and cumbersome process. One of David’s roommates and close friends at the time wasn’t as fortunate. He had bipolar disorder and struggled to get the professional help he needed. He ultimately died by suicide. At the friend’s funeral, David quietly committed himself to doing something about this problem of mental healthcare access, but he had no idea how his work in the lab could connect.

Years later, Nguyen learned that his high school science teacher, a beloved instructor who’d inspired him to go into science, had died of colon cancer. It happened that Nguyen was working on tumor biology in his lab, and he fell into a fervor, dedicating himself day and night to studying colon polyps. He wanted to come up with something positive that would commemorate this man and the impact he’d had on his life.

For several days he worked the problem, trying to look at it from new angles. Then suddenly something clicked. In his field there was a concept called the Fourier Transform that analyzes complex waves. But there was no way to apply that to two-dimensional shapes, like what a pathologist would look at with a colon polyp. Nguyen created a way to bridge that gap, and the LCPC transform was invented.

What Nguyen invented — and what has become the cornerstone technology behind his company BrainScanology — is an algorithm that measures and analyzes complex shapes in an MRI, not just area and volume as has been the practice for decades.

“We recognize squiggliness, but our brains cannot comprehend the significance of that squiggliness,” says Nguyen, trying his best to put the concept in layman’s terms. “Think about two strands of cooked spaghetti on a dinner plate. You know they’re both squiggly, but you can’t quantify it. Measuring area and volume aren’t going to help you. Their difference in squiggliness seems trivial until one shape means you’re going to die in six months.”

Nguyen made his first debut with the algorithm at a hackathon at the QBI Institute of the University of California, San Francisco. There, he was able to show that by analyzing and measuring complex shapes and patterns on an MRI, he could successfully identify patients with ADHD. At that point, he knew he was onto something important, something that would impact healthcare far beyond the brain. Nguyen teamed up with long-time collaborator Harini Kumar, a cognitive scientist with an MBA, raised enough capital to quit his day job, and BrainScanology was born.

“I’m so excited to be working on a technology that’s going to revolutionize not only early diagnosis of psychiatric disorders but so many industries,” says Kumar.

The two took a leap forward towards commercialization when they brought on Van Pham as CTO, a seasoned engineer from Venmo who specializes in building engineering teams and scaling operations. Van Pham was juggling many recruitment offers at the time, but chose upstart BrainScanology because he’d witnessed a family member deteriorate due to dementia.

In the ecosystem of health innovation, BrainScanology is unique in that it is truly an invention on a journey towards application. David Nguyen’s novel way to read MRIs — measuring shape instead of area and volume — has potential applications across a range of industries. The team is focusing first on a few high-impact mental health conditions, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Currently, Nguyen and his team are building ways to get their technology to market, train their algorithm (by feeding it lots of patient data), and create revenue so they can keep validating. One way they’re doing this is by offering a subscription service for brain assessments that can give any consumer an annual check for conditions like Alzheimer’s and ADHD. They’re focusing this product on the Latin American market, using online ads to reach consumers directly. They’ve seen strong interest with more than a million site visits a week.

But the bigger play, once BrainScanology gets FDA clearance, is to offer an easy-to-use platform for use by every healthcare institution and provider. From Kaiser Permanente to university health systems to individual employers, BrainScanology plans to offer the technology to quickly (within 24 hours) provide accurate and automated brain condition assessments. Not only will patients suffering from severe conditions be able to get treatment faster, but concerned patients will be able to receive regular check-ups and get a longitudinal picture of their brain health.

BrainScanology’s platform architecture is being built to scale. Their ultimate goal is to create a secure and scalable multi-tenant SaaS platform available to the whole world.

To hear David Nguyen’s story is to become immediately inspired by the future he’s creating. He combined personal passion with decades of work in science and the result was a breakthrough that could shape healthcare diagnostics for years to come. But it all started with an innovator’s mindset.

“My fundamental philosophy in science is to chase the unknown,” says Nguyen. “I take risks, but that’s where the fun of science is. I assume that if the field hasn’t solved it for a long time, and they’re all smart, it means they’re looking at it the wrong way.”

We’re also excited about Nguyen and his team because they’re building the kind of scalable platform infrastructure that could increase access to care globally. To date, mental health assessments have relied heavily on one-on-one interactions with providers. By default, these solutions gravitated towards the wealthiest regions, where those healthcare providers could be found. But this is a healthcare crisis that knows no boundaries. Millions of people around the world in low-resource settings need regular, reliable check-ups to assess brain health.

BrainScanology’s approach to diagnostics also addresses a lack of tech infrastructure in many settings. “The latest imaging algorithms can’t help in low-resource settings because they depend on the latest imaging scanners (e.g. diffusion tensor imaging, PET scans),” says Nguyen. “BrainScanology’s algorithm, however, works even with images coming from old scanners that only provide structural information of organs.”

Finally, we’re proud to back Nguyen and his team, who have chosen to think differently about seemingly intractable problems in mental health. They’ve gone upstream in an important way, moving from treatment to early detection, which will potentially help millions more people get the care they need.

Join us in welcoming David Nguyen and his team at BrainScanology to the Startup Health family.