Clinical Market for MAS
The Clinical Problem: Muscle Atrophy
Musculoskeletal conditions resulting in loss of muscle mass and quality are among the leading causes of disability, reduced quality of life, and premature death in Europe. They affect people across all age groups and are strongly associated with ageing, obesity, and physical inactivity. The social and economic burden is substantial: lost productivity, extended hospital stays, and long-term care dependency.
More than 50 million Europeans currently live with one or more chronic diseases in which secondary muscle atrophy is a known and clinically significant complication. Conditions including sarcopenia, surgical recovery, COPD, congestive heart failure, chronic kidney disease, cancer cachexia, and liver disease all share the same diagnostic gap: the absence of an accessible, repeatable, radiation-free method to measure muscle mass and tissue quality at the point of care. Sarcopenia alone currently affects an estimated 20 million patients in Europe, with prevalence projected to exceed 32 million by 2045.
What makes muscle atrophy particularly difficult to manage is that its progression is largely invisible until it becomes severe. Patients move from early, asymptomatic deterioration to significant functional impairment without a reliable way to track what is happening in the tissue. Therapy decisions in nutrition, pharmaceuticals, and exercise-based rehabilitation are therefore made without the objective, tissue-level data that would support more effective intervention.
Why Existing Tools Do Not Solve the Problem
A range of techniques exists for measuring muscle mass and composition. The central issue is not the absence of technology but the absence of a tool that combines clinical-grade accuracy with point-of-care accessibility. Current options each carry fundamental constraints that prevent routine use across the care continuum.
CT and MRI deliver high-resolution data but expose patients to ionising radiation or magnetic fields, require specialist infrastructure, and are too costly and resource-intensive for monitoring use. DXA is the gold standard for bone density but is inaccurate for patients with metal implants and similarly confined to specialist settings. Ultrasound is portable but operator-dependent, meaning reproducibility across clinicians and settings is fundamentally limited — a critical barrier in continuous healthcare models where standardised longitudinal data is the objective. BIA is low cost but provides indirect proxies rather than direct tissue measurement, and is inaccurate for patients with fluid imbalances, which describes a large proportion of the chronic disease population MAS is being developed to serve.
None of these tools supports dynamic, continuous, interoperable monitoring at the point of care. MAS is being developed to address this gap.
| Feature | MAS | Ultrasound | BIA | CT | MRI | DXA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Invasiveness | Non-invasive | Non-invasive | Non-invasive | Ionising radiation | Magnetic fields | Ionising radiation |
| Dynamic measurement | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| Affordability | Expected lower cost | Moderate | Low | High | High | High |
| Interoperability | Yes | No [1] | No [2] | No [3] | No [3] | No [4] |
| Chronic disease management | Potential for new treatment algorithms | Limited | Limited | Limited | Limited | Limited |
| Pre- and post-rehabilitation | Being developed for use | Limited | Limited | Limited | Limited | Limited |
| Nutrition and pharmacotherapy monitoring | Being developed for use | Limited | Limited | Limited | Limited | Limited |
| Key limitation | Sensitivity and specificity to be clinically validated against Ultrasound | Operator-dependent; not reproducible at scale | Inaccurate in patients with fluid imbalances | Ionising radiation; specialist infrastructure required | Highest resolution; not suitable for routine monitoring | Inaccurate with metal implants; radiation exposure |
Figure 1. Holistic comparison of MAS in continuous healthcare (Dehghan and Merchant, 2008; Ceniccola et al., 2019; Ward, 2019; Nakanishi et al., 2021; Ashir et al., 2023; Shah et al., 2023)
[1] Older Ultrasound systems may not fully support modern interoperability standards.
[2] BIA is not inherently interoperable for continuous healthcare and relies on further clinical context.
[3] CT and MRI are interoperable in a technical sense, but their primary purpose is not continuous healthcare monitoring.
[4] DXA focuses on static measurements.
The Market Opportunity
MAS is being developed for a market structured around patient need, not a single disease category. The total addressable population in the EU — patients whose clinical management would benefit from accessible, repeatable muscle composition measurement, is estimated at approximately 98.5 million, representing around 22% of the EU population. The serviceable market, reachable through primary and secondary care channels, is approximately 70 million patients. The immediately actionable segment, comprising chronic disease patients in secondary care where clinical need is most acute, is approximately 50 million patients.
Quantifying this in revenue terms is deliberately absent here. Market size figures for muscle atrophy aggregate across heterogeneous patient populations, disease stages, and therapy contexts in ways that produce a wide range of estimates depending on methodology and source. What matters commercially is the structure of demand: large, underserved, distributed across multiple high-prevalence chronic conditions, and concentrated in healthcare settings actively seeking point-of-care tools as part of the EU’s transition from episodic to continuous care. Whether MAS can serve this demand will be determined by the clinical validation programme currently underway.
That transition is the macro tailwind behind MAS. EU healthcare systems are under structural pressure to shift from reactive, hospital-centred care toward proactive, continuous, patient-centred models. This shift creates a category of demand — for affordable, interoperable, non-specialist diagnostic tools usable across the care continuum — that the existing medical imaging market is architecturally unable to serve. MAS is being developed to meet this demand, subject to successful clinical validation and regulatory clearance.
Commercial Pathway
MAS is being developed under the Eurostars-funded DIAMPS programme, a consortium commercially led by Probingon. The programme advances the device through clinical validation toward CE marking and commercial launch under MDR Class IIa, with Probingon responsible for product development, regulatory strategy, and go-to-market execution.
Subject to successful clinical validation and reimbursement studies, MAS is intended to integrate with existing reimbursement pathways for muscle atrophy, enabling incorporation into standard care pathways. A pay-per-use and subscription model via the MAS IoT data platform is planned as a second revenue stream that would grow with clinical adoption.
MAS represents Track 2 in Probingon’s two-track commercial model. Development is funded primarily through non-dilutive grant programmes and does not affect the FAT-IBC licensing business financially or operationally.