Digital Lungs: How AI Twins Are Reshaping Respiratory Medicine

CHICAGO, IL – December 01, 2025 – A strategic alliance between engineering giant L&T Technology Services (LTTS) and AI computing leader NVIDIA is poised to bring a new dimension to respiratory medicine. The companies have announced the development of a next-generation platform that creates an AI-powered “digital twin” of a patient’s lungs, a move that promises to revolutionize how clinicians diagnose and treat complex conditions like lung cancer, COPD, and infectious diseases.

This collaboration signals a significant strategic shift, where deep engineering expertise merges with cutting-edge AI infrastructure to move beyond static medical images into dynamic, interactive patient models. Set to be unveiled at the prestigious Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) 2025 conference, the platform aims to transform diagnostic precision and surgical planning, offering a glimpse into a future where medical interventions are rehearsed on a virtual replica before ever touching the patient.

A New Dimension in Diagnostics

For decades, clinicians have relied on flat, two-dimensional images from CT scans to understand the intricate, three-dimensional structure of the lungs. While invaluable, these images are snapshots in time. The LTTS platform seeks to fundamentally change this paradigm by converting standard CT scans into a living, breathing 3D model of a patient's unique lung anatomy.

This is not just a simple 3D rendering. Powered by NVIDIA's specialized AI frameworks, the digital twin provides an immersive and interactive environment. It meticulously maps the complex network of airways, blood vessels, and lung lobes, while precisely highlighting anomalies such as tumors or lesions. The technology leverages NVIDIA MONAI, an open-source framework built specifically for medical imaging, to perform the complex task of image segmentation—essentially teaching the AI to identify and separate different anatomical structures with superhuman accuracy.

Once the model is built, NVIDIA TensorRT, an AI inference optimizer, ensures the platform runs with the low latency required for real-time clinical use. This allows a surgeon or pulmonologist to virtually navigate through the patient's airways, plan the safest and most efficient path for a bronchoscopy, and visualize the procedure from multiple angles. It transforms a diagnostic tool into a dynamic guidance system.

“Our collaboration with NVIDIA combines LTTS’ expertise in AI-driven diagnostics and predictive analytics, with NVIDIA’s powerful, modeling and visualization platform,” said Alind Saxena, Executive Director and President of Mobility and Tech at L&T Technology Services. “This lets us engineer a digital twin platform that not only enhances diagnostic accuracy but also gives clinicians an immersive, real-time planning tool.”

The Strategic Convergence of Engineering and AI

The partnership between LTTS and NVIDIA is more than a technological integration; it's a powerful example of the strategic convergence shaping the future of MedTech. LTTS, a subsidiary of the industrial conglomerate Larsen & Toubro, brings decades of deep domain expertise in engineering, product development, and building scalable connected health systems. This background is critical for translating a powerful AI model into a robust, reliable, and clinically useful platform.

On the other side, NVIDIA has been aggressively expanding its footprint in healthcare, framing its mission around enabling “digital biology.” This initiative goes far beyond gaming graphics cards, involving strategic partnerships with top-tier institutions like the Mayo Clinic and industry leaders like Johnson & Johnson MedTech. By providing the foundational hardware and software—like the MONAI framework—NVIDIA is positioning itself as the central nervous system for the next generation of AI-driven medical devices.

“Working with LTTS to accelerate the development of AI-enabled medical technology demonstrates how NVIDIA is empowering the healthcare industry with accelerated computing and AI innovation,” noted David Niewolny, NVIDIA's Director of Business Development for Healthcare/Medical.

This alliance places the duo in a competitive but evolving market. Established players like Siemens Healthineers and GE Healthcare are already deploying their own AI tools, such as Siemens’ AI-Rad Companion for chest CT analysis and GE's partnership with Optellum for AI-powered lung nodule assessment. However, LTTS and NVIDIA are differentiating their offering by focusing on the creation of a comprehensive, dynamic digital twin for both diagnostics and navigational guidance, a significant step beyond many current AI tools that focus primarily on image analysis and risk scoring.

From Precision Planning to Accessible Care

The ultimate measure of this technology's success will be its impact on patient outcomes and the accessibility of care. For complex procedures like bronchoscopy, where clinicians navigate a scope deep into the lungs to biopsy a suspicious nodule, precision is paramount. A digital twin that allows for pre-procedural path planning could significantly increase accuracy, reduce procedure times, and lower the risk of complications like a collapsed lung.

For lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death globally, this could be transformative. By enabling more precise biopsies and earlier, more confident diagnoses, the platform has the potential to improve survival rates. For chronic conditions like COPD, the ability to create dynamic models that “evolve with the patient” opens the door to better long-term monitoring and personalized management strategies.

While the announcement is forward-looking, the path to widespread clinical adoption involves significant hurdles. The platform will need to undergo rigorous clinical validation and secure regulatory approval from bodies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its European counterparts. Most AI-driven medical software is classified as a moderate-risk device, often navigating the FDA's 510(k) clearance pathway by demonstrating substantial equivalence to an existing device, though novel technologies can face more stringent reviews.

The broader promise, as highlighted in the announcement, is the potential to democratize access to advanced care. By creating a more intuitive and powerful planning tool, the platform could empower a wider range of hospitals and clinicians to perform complex procedures with greater confidence, extending the reach of high-quality respiratory medicine beyond elite academic centers. This strategic fusion of engineering and AI is forging a new frontier where the digital and biological worlds merge, aiming to make lung disease more predictable, manageable, and treatable for patients everywhere.