Khosla Ventures founder and chair Vinod Khosla. Photo by Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch, under Creative Commons license

HeartVista, a Los Altos, California-based diagnostic imaging startup, has announced that it’s closed an $8.65 million Series A financing round led by venture capital firm Khosla Ventures, with participation from Leslie Ventures, Open Field Capital, former Facebook executive Jeff Rothschild, and other unnamed investors. The new financing adds up the total funding HeartVista has raised since its inception to $16.4 million. HeartVista says the new financing will go towards building out its AI-assisted diagnostic imaging product and expanding its sales and marketing efforts. The new funding will also help HeartVista offer its diagnostic imaging tool to healthcare customers for free in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic, according to a press statement.

HeartVista offers a diagnostic imaging tool that’s aided by artificial intelligence. Conventionally, healthcare personnel perform manual magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests. The use of such manual tests, although reliable, faces several hiccups including high costs, long scan times, complexity of use, and a lack of trained technologists to administer such tests. HeartVista comes into play by using AI-assisted software to help make MRI tests easier. Its software also helps detects artifacts, which are, observations that are not naturally present on MRI test results and could be an indication of something physically wrong with a test subject. In summary, HeartVista offers an AI-assisted diagnostic imaging tool that’s targeted at medical customers.

“We’re excited to attract such a strong group of investors, led by Khosla Ventures,” HeartVista CEO Itamar Kandel said in a press statement. “The new funds will bring us closer to realizing our vision of making MRIs affordable, widely available, and highly consistent, ushering in the age of MRI for all,” he added.