In two years, executives at Advanced Imaging Technologies Inc. have gone from knocking on doors seeking venture capital to introducing their holographic dense breast imaging system to Asian health care professionals.

During October, they traveled to Korea and Taiwan with a trade mission led by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

And in November, the company collected $2.5 million in Series A private equity financing - stock offered to venture capitalists that can later be converted to common stock if a company goes public or is sold.

They also closed a deal with Cedara Software, a part of publicly traded Merge Healthcare, to develop software to use with the Richland company's ARIA Breast Imaging System.

"By this time next year, we should be ramping up production," said Michael Hartwig, the chief financial officer.

The company, headed by CEO Lura Powell, plans to produce its ARIA Breast Imaging System in Richland on a manufacture-to-order basis and is already working with several interested Asian companies.

"Asia represents a significant market opportunity for our company and our technology," Powell said.

That's because Asian women generally have dense breast tissue, which can make it difficult for traditional mammography to detect cancerous tumors or abnormalities. In a report published by the National Institute of Health, the National Cancer Institute claimed a high level of cancers reside in dense breast tissue.

The ARIA system, which is in use at Kadlec Medical Center, uses ultrasound to produce a hologram of the breast in a three-dimensional view, without using radiation.

Anna Gutowska, the director of chemical applications, said the company doesn't see its system as a replacement for traditional mammography but rather as a tool doctors can use in conjunction with mammograms.

"This will fill a niche where mammography has problems and fill a critical need," she said.

Hartwig said during the October trade mission, Asian companies were "very interested," and the company is also working with Asian health care professionals they met with during a radiological trade meeting in Chicago a few weeks ago.

"The relationships that we established during the trade mission will have long-term economic and strategic benefits," he said. "Meeting with key Asian regulators and business executives to introduce our product will facilitate expedited approval and the time to market."

In addition, the company partnered with Cedara in late November to develop custom software to provide advanced image processing and analysis features, like skin line detection and image stitching.

Getting the system to health care professionals is important, Powell said, but so is increasing its capability.

"Our strategic relationship with Cedara gives us both," Powell said. "Cedara's highly experienced engineering team will allow us to do more – faster."

As part of the deal, Cedara acquired a "small" equity staking in AIT, as well, and the companies will promote the ARIA system jointly.

"We believe the partnership will also expedite acceptance of the product," said Hartwig.

Company's founder George Garlick developed the acoustical holography technology with other collaborators in the 1960s for industrial applications and later realized it may have potential in medicine.

Garlick's son, Todd Garlick, is AIT's principal engineer and helped design and manufacture the ARIA system, which has received clearance for breast imaging and image-guided breast biopsy from the federal Food and Drug Administration.

The company has 14 U.S. patents for holographic ultrasound and four pending foreign patent applications.

The $2.5 million the company received in venture capital will be used in sales and marketing.

The ARIA systems will be manufactured in Richland and sell for $200,000 to $300,000, Hartwig said.