A 37-year-old father was warming up his car while his wife buckled their daughter into her car seat. Then suddenly, his fingers started going numb and his face began drooping.

At first, doctors thought it was a mini-stroke, where symptoms typically resolve within 24 hours. But further testing revealed something more serious.

This man had a hole in his heart – a patent foramen ovale (PFO) – that had allowed a clot to reach his brain. Fortunately, the technology used to find it was robotic transcranial Doppler (rTCD), not traditional screening methods, which have a much higher chance of missing these openings.

Armed with the right diagnosis, Dr. Razi Khan (interventional cardiologist), Dr. Gregory Walker (interventional neurologist) and the cardiac team at Royal Columbian Hospital repaired the hole on April 29, 2026 – and, according to Dr. Khan, reduced the patient’s risk of a repeat stroke by 40–50%.

The 37-year-old has now recovered, impressed by the technology and relieved it may help prevent a future stroke. “Technology is moving so quickly,” he said.

As for us, we’re proud of the clinical team, and proud that the technology that gave a young father his best chance at a healthy life is something we built – our robotic TCD, NG2 Intelligent Ultrasound.

To see the NG2 in action – placed around the patient’s head to measure blood flow to his brain – and hear Dr. Khan and Dr. Walker walk through the procedure, watch the short video below.