Advanced imaging startup Diagnostic Photonics raises $1.3M investment

A surgical imaging spinoff from the University of Illinois has raised $1.3 million in equity, according to a regulatory filing.

Chicago-based Diagnostic Photonics sourced the funding from seven investors, likely including IllinoisVentures, a seed and early stage investment firm launched by the University of Illinois.

CEO Andrew Cittadine didn’t return a call.

The company says its imaging technology is designed to help doctors evaluate diseased tissue during surgery by visualizing tissue “at the microscopic level.”

Diagnostic Photonics calls its core technology “interferometric synthetic aperture microscopy,” which uses reflected light and a “novel method” of image reconstruction to produce scans. It’s based on optical coherence tomography, a noninvasive imaging technique.

The company was founded in 2008 on technology pioneered at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois.