The Startup Working to Change How Elevated Brain Pressure Is Diagnosed

Some of the biggest innovations in healthcare start with a simple question: What if there’s a better way?

For CranioSense’s co-founders, Dr. Ryan Myers and Kristian DiMatteo, they wanted to find a different way to diagnose elevated brain pressure following traumatic brain injuries that’s noninvasive and can be used across a variety of care settings. CranioSense’s product, IHdetect, will be able to diagnose elevated intracranial pressure in minutes, without the need to drill a hole into the skull or insert a sensor into the brain.  

In a wide-ranging interview, Startup Boston chatted with Dr. Myers about the story behind CranioSense, ways its product will help and support the healthcare community, their involvement in the Massachusetts-area startup community, and more. 

Startup Boston (SB): How did CranioSense get its start?

Dr. Ryan Myers (RM): I've always been a tinkerer, as an engineer. After grad school, Kris and I, my co-founder, linked up at a group that was doing early research and development. It took on difficult engineering problems that were outside of traditional healthcare models, like how do we diagnose people sooner around neurodegenerative diseases and other traumas like that. 

The only way to assess the pressure in our brains is to drill a hole in your head or hole in your spine and measure correctly. Elevated brain pressure due to trauma is similar in concept to hitting your knee on a coffee table and watching the swelling build up. That’s natural and normal, but in the skull, there's no place for that extra volume to go.

In these traumatic scenarios, pressure can either have very consequential immediate impact or it could slowly ruin the nervous system and how it operates if the pressure is left high chronically. Beyond trauma, there are many reasons to assess this pressure. But today, we can only do it for the sickest of the sick. 

SB: Tell me what this means for doctors and patients. 

RM: Only 9% of the hospitals have neurosurgeons on staff 24/7 to do these invasive procedures. It's so specialized that you have to be going to the right hospital in the right space at the right time. Unfortunately, a traumatic brain injury doesn’t really care if you are near one of these hospitals or not when it hits. Providing 100% of the hospitals with noninvasive tools like IHdetect means neurological triage can happen almost anywhere across the U.S.

SB: Continuing on that point, what does this mean for patients? How are you educating people on traumatic brain injuries?

RM: There are over 25 different medical conditions that can increase your brain pressure for any number of reasons. It could be hereditary, metabolic, hormonal, traumatic, etc. 

A huge part of our mission is bringing these medical conditions to the forefront and advocating for these patients. In some instances, they’re more prevalent than traumatic injuries but aren’t talked about as much because they haven’t had a national advocate to date like Parkinson’s has with Michael J. Fox and ALS has with the ice bucket challenge. Those movements moved the needle for those conditions. But for our conditions, we don't have that yet. We can help bridge that gap with IHdetect.

SB: Continuing on that point, how does CranioSense solve intracranial pressure? Walk me through your product. 

RM: Near infrared light is unique because it shines through tissues like skin and bone but when it hits blood, it bounces back and gives us information on how the blood is moving through those vessels. 

With IHdetect, for the first time, we can compare what’s happening in the brain where pressure is unknown to areas of the body where pressure is well understood, such as the finger, ear, and forehead. Our theory was that those sites could provide a physiological baseline for how blood vessels respond under pressure. What we’ve shown is that there are measurable differences in both the timing of blood flow and the vascular signals between the brain and those reference points, creating a new way to assess elevated intracranial pressure noninvasively.

It's kind of somewhere between a blood pressure cuff and an EKG in terms of ease of application. You don’t have to take clothes off or change. You don’t need highly trained practitioners to use it. It will be quick and easy to use. We think this can be used for the ICU to home care and everything in between. 

SB: Switching gears a bit, how did your team come together?

RW: Kris and I met at a company doing early stage R&D, and it became clear pretty quickly that our skill sets complemented each other well. Kris brings deep expertise in operations and product development, while my background is where business and research intersect. I focus on making sure the science is solving a real problem and addressing a clear market need. Having those two perspectives working together has been a key part of building CranioSense.

SB: CranioSense has been around since 2023. What’s the journey been like?

RW: Kris and I are both really intentional about putting our assumptions on the table and calling them exactly what they are: assumptions. We take a scientific method approach to a lot of things, even in business development.

One thing that was unexpected, in a positive way, was that we ultimately didn’t need as much equity funding as we anticipated.

Our original path was to raise capital primarily through angels and VCs. But we also applied for grants that aligned closely with our product roadmap, including funding for our pivotal study and for the remaining stages of product development.

So while the outcome was unexpected, it was also a very intentional approach. We were strategic about pursuing nondilutive funding that matched the work we needed to do, and those wins really put wind in our sails.

SB: How has the startup community supported you? And organizations like Massachusetts Life Sciences and Mass Innovation Network?

RW: Obviously, winning some of the awards we were fortunate enough to win is a signal to other people that we’re coming through and delivering on our vision. It's helped us to have a more well-rounded fundraising strategy.

But I think the big thing for Kris and I is we're big on the community in general. There have been so many people who just helped us by taking a meeting or making an introduction without expecting anything in return. It’s those sorts of things that are important for a young company. Being a part of the community ended up routing us through that. It continues to cascade. 

One of the things that we're super intentional about is returning that by paying it forward. Helping without expecting anything in return just to be hand because somebody gave us a hand.

Without the community being there in the first place, we wouldn't have had that hand. The money and awards have been important to our success, but without communities or networks like this, I don't know where we’d be.

Not every state has that, and not every industry has that. We're very grateful to be in Massachusetts and in the life sciences community.

Final Thoughts

The origins of CranioSense highlight that an idea for a much-needed solution can grow into a company and make a difference. Co-founders, Dr. Ryan Myers and Kristian DiMatteo, are leaning into their experience and existing partnership to help put the focus on and develop an easier way to diagnose elevated brain pressure due to conditions like traumatic brain injuries. Their journey is also a reminder of the importance of the startup community and the power of support. 

Looking for a way to stay updated about the latest happenings in the startup community? Subscribe to our newsletter today (directly below)!

About the author: Kathleen Ohlson is a Boston-based content writer with a background as a high-tech writer and storyteller. With a passion for creating content that resonates with audiences, you can connect with her on LinkedIn.