Raymond Damadian
Damadian is the company's largest shareholder, with 8% of stock worth $6.5 million. Despite owning only 8% of the stock, he maintains almost 100% control of the company through a separate class of shares (Class C) that only Damadian controls 2007. Damadian later collaborated with Wilson Greatbatch, one early developer of the implantable pacemaker, to develop an MRI-compatible pacemaker. He invented a stand-up MRI system and has 15 MRI scanning centers across the United States. There are a number of independent MRI centers that use this technology both in the U.S. and around the world. The company conceived and built the world's first Upright Multi-Positional MRI, which was recognized as The Invention of the Year in 2007 by the Intellectual Properties Owners Association Education Foundation.
Vasilis Ntziachristos
Another focus of Ntziachristos' research is developing optoacoustic techniques for breaking thought the penetration barriers of conventional optical imaging methods. His group develops hardware, image reconstruction, spectral unmixing and information processing techniques as well as applications in biology and medicine. Among many other inventions, he is the inventor of multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) and raster scan optoacoustic mesoscopy (RSOM), which are non-invasive imaging methods that simultaneously measure different parameters of tissue physiology and pathology non-invasively, allowing new ways to diagnose disease and monitor treatment. MSOT and RSOM are now used in a range of preclinical and clinical studies, including advancing characterization of psoriasis, breast tumors, metastatic melanoma and inflammation in Crohn's disease. MSOT has also been used to visualize metabolism within brown fat, suggesting it may be effective for analyzing muscle energetics and lipid metabolism in a much simpler and more accessible way than with other techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging. Ntziachristos is a founder of iThera Medical GmbH, which currently commercializes optoacoustic technology and has placed systems around the world.Ntziachristos is author or co-author of more than 400 publications in peer reviewed journals and a holder of more than 25 patents. His work has been cited more than 33,000 times (as at October 2018). His h-index is 88.