In a hospital angiography suite, a vascular surgeon threads a wire into a diabetic patient's leg, opens a blocked artery, and injects contrast dye. The X-ray blooms with a picture of the pipes. What it does not show - what no routine tool showed in real time - is whether the tissue at the far end of those pipes is actually being fed. The surgeon closes up and hopes. That gap between opening an artery and knowing the foot is perfused is the problem PEDRA Technology set out to close.
Founded in Singapore in 2014, PEDRA Technology built the PEDRA Xauron Perfusion System, which the company describes as the first device to deliver real-time, quantitative deep-tissue perfusion readings during a procedure. It is aimed squarely at peripheral arterial disease (PAD) and its most severe form, critical limb threatening ischemia (CLTI) - a condition whose five-year mortality can exceed 50 percent, worse than many cancers.
What it actually does
The Xauron uses laser-based sensing to read microvascular blood flow beneath the skin of the foot. It returns a quantitative perfusion index in under ten seconds and can track up to four channels at once, letting a clinician watch several foot angiosomes - the distinct territories fed by different arteries - rather than settle for a single reading. It needs no contrast and adds no radiation of its own. Its sensors are radiolucent, so they can sit inside the angiographic field without blocking the X-ray image the surgeon is already relying on.
That combination is the point of difference. Existing ways to gauge perfusion - toe pressures, ankle-brachial index, transcutaneous oxygen, skin perfusion pressure - tend to be indirect, surface-level, or taken before and after rather than during the procedure. Contrast-based angiographic perfusion software reads the image, not the tissue. PEDRA's bet is that a direct, deep-tissue, real-time number changes the decision a physician makes while the patient is still on the table.
Who is behind it
PEDRA is led by CEO and founder Kareen Looi, a serial entrepreneur in vascular devices who previously founded Setagon, a US coronary-stent company acquired by Medtronic. The technical core is CTO Whye-Kei Lye, who holds a Yale physics PhD and is credited with more than 31 patents. The clinical voice belongs to CMO Paul Hayes, a former vascular surgeon at Cambridge. Around them sits an international advisory board of vascular specialists across Singapore, the United States and Europe.
Who it is for
The customers are hospitals and the physicians who work their angio suites: vascular surgeons, interventional cardiologists and radiologists, and the limb-salvage teams treating diabetic and PAD patients. The business is classic B2B medtech - a capital monitor plus single-use sensors - supported by a clinical evidence program whose goal is to make perfusion monitoring a standard of care rather than an optional extra.
The money and the recognition have followed the thesis. In September 2020 PEDRA closed a $4.7 million Series A led by SEEDS Capital, the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, alongside M&L Healthcare Investments and two strategic manufacturers of peripheral vascular devices. In January 2021 the FDA granted the Xauron system Breakthrough Device Designation for periprocedural use in CLTI - a status that prioritizes review for devices that could meaningfully help patients with serious conditions. It is, the company notes, the first perfusion monitor for CLTI to receive it.
Where it fits in the market is a quieter story than a headline unicorn. PEDRA is a small, focused team working a specific, high-stakes wedge: the moment of decision inside a limb-salvage procedure. If perfusion monitoring becomes routine, the payoff is measured less in revenue multiples and more in amputations avoided.