By Brian E. Clark
WisBusiness.com
For the past dozen-plus years, Standard Imaging — a Middleton company that makes a variety of radiation measurement instruments — has been bagging awards on an almost annual basis.
The first one came in 1994, a little more than five years after the firm was conceived in a basement, and honored the company’s Brachytherapy Well Chamber. The technology behind the device, which allows medical physicists to accurately calculate the strength of radioactive “seeds” used to treat cancer, was licensed from WARF.
The most recent honors came this winter, when it received a 2007 Wisconsin Manufacturer of the Year Award in the small company category and two Governor’s New Product honors.
“We’re kind of the toolbox for the medical physicists,” said Ed Neumueller, president and CEO of Standard Imaging (pictured at left). “We made hardware and software products that make their jobs easier to do.”
Ray Riddle, the chief regulatory officer and a co-founder, said the company originally planned on making tools for the medical imaging field.
“The funny thing is now, some 15 years later, we’re finally getting into imaging,” said Riddle. “We got a little sidetracked in the early years with bracytherapy and quality assurance instruments for radiation therapy.”
Now, he said, companies like TomoTherapy are combining radiation therapy with real-time imaging. “So you see us coming almost full circle to be where we intended to be,” Riddle said.
The pair said the company is currently up for an environmental award for its new, 27,000-square-foot headquarters on Deming Way that uses geothermal heating and cooling and other green building techniques.
Standard Imaging currently has 46 employees and has been growing at a rate of around 15 percent a year, Neumueller and Riddle said. They declined to reveal sales for the privately held firm.
They said the current economic slowdown has not affected their company, though they noted that big radiation machine therapy manufacturers such as TomoTherapy have been hurt because hospitals and clinics are delaying shipments.
“I don’t think their sales are down, though,” Riddle said. “And the future for radiation therapy remains strong, but the cost of those machines runs $3 million to $4 million installed.”
The pair said they could not imagine being anywhere else in Wisconsin besides the Madison area.
“We prefer it here and we have a whole list of reasons why we like it here,” explained Neumueller, who said the company works closely with the calibration lab of UW-Madison medical physics professor Larry DeWerd, who’s the third co-founder of the company.
“That is real vital to us,” Neumueller said. “We are there every day with our instruments getting calibrated. That’s been a cornerstone of our business, having that link.”
Added Riddle: “The university’s medical physics department is one of the best in the country and may be the first in the country. We’ve got a good relationship and having them close by is clearly an asset.”
