The quality of cancer treatment is set to improve thanks to a new technology developed by an Australian medical start-up that initially started out as a university research project.

Called "Breathe Well", the technology developed by Opus Medical coaches cancer patients to self-regulate their breathing to assist with the accurate targeting of tumours and sparing of healthy tissues during radiation treatment. It is specifically targeted towards breast cancer patients.

According to company co-founder Dr Sean Pollock, approximately one in ten left-sided breast cancer patients will experience cardiac radiation toxicity from their radiation therapy. Of these patients, 43 per cent will require heart surgery due to their heart being unintentionally blasted with radiation.

To solve this problem, Breathe Well uses a motion sensor camera to detect breathing patterns and a visual interface to advise cancer patients on how to adjust their breathing in real-time while they are receiving radiation treatment, in turn saving their heart from radiation toxicity. Treatment therapy usually takes 20 to 30 days and relies on accurate breathing to save healthy organs.

Pioneered by Paul Keall, a Professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Sydney and a director at Opus Medical, it was developed with Dr Pollock as part of his PhD project.

In a worst-case scenario, Dr Pollock says traditional breathing technique methods resulted in hearts or lungs receiving unnecessary radiation therapy. To make matters worse, communication with patients is typically done over an intercom, making instructions sometimes difficult to hear.

"Patients are not getting the real-time information they need on whether they are positioned in the right spot," Dr Pollock says. "This is important because you need to replicate the same position.

"The radiation beam is programmed to fire at a very specific spot."

He hoped to fix this with Breathe Well and has already conducted clinical trials at hospitals in Sydney and Newcastle, which he said motivated him to continue to commercialise his product after they begun to ask how they could continue to use the device after the trial was over.

"Treatment should be fast and easy and not an intimidating experience for the patient or hospital staff," he says. "What difference I would like to see is being able to get this technology out there to get more accurate treatments and make it streamlined and easier for everyone involved."

So far the start-up has received funds and investments from the NSW government's Health Medical Devices Fund ($1.3 million) and Jobs for NSW Building Partnerships grant program, Sydney Seed Fund, Sydney Angels, and start-up incubators Cicada Innovations and Sydney University's Incubate.

It finished last year by securing the appropriate Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for selling the device in Australia and the US.

Typically, venture capitalists have been reluctant to invest in medical technology due to medical trials that can take years and regulatory approvals which can take even longer. If a clinical trial fails or regulatory approval is denied, they lose their investment, meaning a larger risk to their investment than investing in, say, a startup based on software.

For this reason, Dr Pollock says government funding had been "critical" in getting his device commercialised.

"I think we'd be in a very different position if we didn't get those government grants," he said. "We would not have the team size we do now and we'd still working through the regulatory process."

According to Dr Pollock, the Breathe Well device, which he estimates will sell for $50,000, will save treatment times at hospitals, enabling them to treat more cancer patients in a day.

John Barilaro, NSW's Deputy Premier and Minister for Small Business, has praised the device, calling it a "clever technology" and a way to "more accurately target cancerous tissue while also reducing damage to the surrounding healthy tissue".

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the correct statistics on radiation toxicity affecting patients receiving breast cancer radiation therapy. Dr Pollock misspoke and has since provided correct figures.