The Remarkable Journey of Imaginostics: Imaging Diagnostics Beyond Geographic and Scientific Frontiers
From France to the USA, from Parisian romance to revolutionizing global healthcare, CEO Valerie Gharagouzloo and husband Codi Amir Gharagouzloo, PhD, have teamed up to bring a 13-year old medical imaging technology to the market. A member of the StartUp Health Alzheimer’s Moonshot Community, Imaginostics’ novel approach to MRI could detect Alzheimer’s decades earlier and make full body scans safer for use in preventive health settings.
Origin Story
The story begins in Paris back in 2007, when Codi Amir Gharagouzloo, a Kansas State University student majoring in physics and mechanical engineering, embarked on a summer study abroad program to learn French. It was there, at the historic Catholic University of Paris in the sixth arrondissement, that he met Valerie Aimee Leiba, a French law student at the prestigious Pantheon-Assas University with an international spirit and a passion for cultural diversity and social and economic justice.
Fast forward a few years, the couple welcomed their first child in 2011 and moved to Boston, where Codi pursued his PhD in bioengineering. Guided by his expertise in physics and imaging technologies, he asked himself: “What if we could harness imaging techniques to gain non-invasive insights into the human body’s internal physiology?” And more specifically: “What if we could overcome MRI’s limitation of qualitative signals to provide measurable, quantitative information?”
From this vision, his invention—QUTE-CE MRI which stands for Quantitative Ultra-short Time-to-Echo Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging—was born in 2012.
A few years later, Valerie resumed her law studies to obtain a Master of Laws (LLM) at Northeastern University and became a New York attorney. She opened her own immigration law practice with the Lawyers for Affordable Justice incubator in Boston. Meanwhile, Codi completed his PhD in 2016 and decided to further develop his technology for two additional years in Dr. Georges El Fakhri’s lab at the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
As his postdoctoral position came to an end, uncertainty loomed about his future career path: continue in academia or transition to the industry? During this pivotal moment, Codi shared his professional aspirations with Valerie, and he conveyed his complex MRI technology to her in accessible, layman’s terms. For the first time, she understood the full reach of his technology and the deep impact it could have on people worldwide.
With passion, faith, and determination, Valerie, who was an entrepreneur at the Impact Hub and the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) in Boston, sparked the dream of bringing his invention from bench to hospital bedside for patients’ benefit. A few months later, the couple met with founding angel Mike Lawson who propelled the dream into reality, and in July 2018, Imaginostics, a name derived from "imaging diagnostics," was officially founded.
Under the Hood
At the root of Imaginostics’ success story is the dynamic synergy and intertwined complementarity between its two co-founders. Dr. Codi Gharagouzloo brings unrivaled scientific brilliance and a great skill to direct the company’s R&D endeavors, while Valerie embodies visionary, creative, and compassionate leadership, with a talent for spotting and unlocking her team’s strengths. In addition to driving the team, key partnerships, commercialization, and communication strategies, Valerie’s trailblazing and tenacious personality has been key to overcoming the many obstacles and rejections on the road to entrepreneurship success.
Together, the pair exemplifies the transformative power of blending law, science, business, and family. As Valerie explains “It takes a lot of faith, courage, and perseverance to pour all your strength, energy, and resilience in such an endeavor without reaping immediate rewards. Imaginostics is at the center of our lives and our family.”
As time went by, Valerie and Codi grew their family and welcomed their second child in 2019, shortly after the company’s inception, and their third child in 2024, just in time for their big plan to reach the market within the next two years. They also relocated to Lake Nona Medical City to combine a world-class healthcare ecosystem with a family-friendly lifestyle, fostering both their personal and professional growth.
Imaginostics' mission is both bold and transformative: to shift healthcare from curative to preventative care. Their imaging innovation surpasses traditional MRI, delivering 100 times clearer images compared to MRI scans without contrast—or 10 times clearer than those obtained with toxic gadolinium—using a safe contrast agent that supports preventative care. However, they don’t just do better and safer imaging, they also enable unprecedented precision medicine with pioneer diagnostics and prognostics powered by AI.
In October 2024, Imaginostics received the FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for the intended use to serve “patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) stages 3 to 5 or end-stage renal disease (ESRD), for whom gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) in MRI and iodine-based contrast agents in CT are contraindicated" and joined the Total Product Life Cycle Advisory Program (TAP). This is already a game changer for patients suffering from chronic kidney disease, and patients who want to avoid the chronic toxicity of gadolinium, says Valerie.
Imaginostics’ breakthrough innovation lies in quantum physics: for the first time, MRI signals provide quantitative data on vascular structures, functions, and leakage of small blood vessels. This groundbreaking capability opens new doors for studying disease pathophysiology and drug pharmacokinetics.
For example, in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia, it’s now understood that vascular features such as vascular dysfunction are the most significant contributors to disease progression. In published scientific studies using APOE-4 rat models, Codi demonstrated that Imaginostics’ technology could detect Alzheimer’s-related vascular changes decades before symptom onset—equivalent to approximately 20 human years of age.
Supported by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), Imaginostics’ clinical studies promise revolutionary advancements, paving the way for novel drugs targeting vascular biomarkers. Imaginostics’ QUTE-CE MRI could lead to breakthroughs in vascular-targeting therapeutics, like PET imaging’s role in anti-amyloid and tau therapies.
What’s Next
Significant NIH grants and support from the ADDF fueled Imaginostics’ growth from 2022 onward. In 2024, the company secured FDA Breakthrough Device Designation and successfully raised $5.3M in additional funding, highlighting clinician-investors’ confidence in the vision and technology. Imaginostics is poised for another major leap forward through strategic partnerships that will significantly accelerate the pathway to Phase 3 clinical trials, bringing the company closer to transforming patient care worldwide.
The versatility of Imaginostics' platform technology extends beyond neurological diseases. With clinical applications in cardiovascular health, oncology, rare diseases, and even longevity, the innovation holds vast potential.
Codi suggests that the same drugs targeting Alzheimer’s could also address aging, thanks to the technology’s ability to detect subtle vascular changes throughout the whole body. Codi further explains: “We quantitatively assess vascular health in soft tissues—including leakage, a key indicator of inflammation—providing precise biomarkers to evaluate biological aging across any organ system.”
As Valerie aptly describes, Imaginostics is laying the foundation for a futuristic “MedBay” diagnostic system that could detect diseases before symptoms arise—enabling treatment and halting their progression before it’s too late.
From their young years and passionate vision of the world to the creation of a revolutionizing healthcare technology, Valerie and Codi are worth following. We encourage you to keep tabs on them and their incredible work at Imaginostics as they contribute to building the future of health over the next few years. They’ve got a big global health moonshot vision and over a decade of R&D behind them. And if you’re running an Alzheimer's company, join them in our Alzheimer’s Moonshot Community here at StartUp Health.
Connect with Imaginostics via email
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