Lucy Gellman Photo
Tech geek Fitz G. Walker has had a goal in mind for some 20 years now: To train technology to see something that the human eye can’t see, and respond to it faster than he can.
Now, as president, CEO and chief technology officer of Newhallville-based Bartron Medical Imaging, he’s getting close. Really close.
It started when he thought about how James C. Tilton’s Hierarchical Image Segmentation (HSEG), a device for NASA that presents a set of, as NASA explains, “hierarchically related segmentations from imagery data,” had applications in the field of breast cancer research. Through two PCs hooked up to a supercomputer in his garage, he created MED-SEG, an imaging system that enhances the information already present in traditional radiology images, like MRIs, CT scans, and PET scan. As New Haven Independent alum Thomas MacMillan wrote in 2011: “The technology could reduce false positives in mammograms by 80 percent.”
MED-SEG won Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in 2010. That was the birth of Bartron, which has now expanded its services in the hope of being a leader in health care and cancer prevention. You can read more about that here, here and here.
Now, you can listen to it too. Introduced as “a true Renaissance man, cut from a Paul Robeson kind of cloth,” Walker appeared as a guest on “LoveBabz LoveTalk” with host Babz Rawls-Ivy, sharing the state of his business as he finds investors for the new technology. Walker, who is also a technical teacher at Eli Whitney and accomplished jazz musician, also discussed how to get New Haven’s students interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) careers at a higher rate.
To listen to the full episode, click on the audio above or find it for free download on Soundcloud, iTunes or any podcatcher under “WNHH Community Radio.”
