The Memo: Illuminant Surgical Bringing X-Ray Vision to the Body

Under the direction of Co-Founder and Co-CEO Eldrick Millares, Illuminant Surgical is developing a new way for physicians to see into the human body during procedures by projecting patient-specific anatomy directly onto the skin. By combining artificial intelligence, computer vision, and dynamic projection mapping, the company is working toward a single mission: X-ray vision for the body.

Origin Story

Illuminant Surgical was founded by Millares and his co-founder and Co-CEO, James Hu, MD, whose relationship dates back to their freshman year at Stanford, where they were dormmates. Their complementary backgrounds became the foundation of the company. Millares is an electrical engineer by training, with experience at the intersection of hardware and software. “I started working in LiDAR sensors for self-driving cars,” he said, referencing his early career in autonomous vehicle technology. He later spent time at Apple, working on the M-series chips for iPhone and Mac.

Hu brings the clinician’s perspective. Trained as a bioengineer, he earned his MD from the University of California, Irvine while simultaneously working full time at the startup. “Imagine 80-, 90-hour work weeks where he had to drive from Orange and Irvine all the way up to our offices in Culver City,” Millares said. 

That fusion of deep technical expertise and clinical insight shaped how the team thought about the problem from day one. Illuminant Surgical’s software team comes from graphics and video games, not traditional medtech, a deliberate choice rooted in how the founders think about visualization. “We get to use amazing technology to model and create realistic 3D characters,” Millares said. “You’ve seen it in Disney and Pixar movies. How hair moves, how muscles move, skeletal animation. We want to bring that same technology into medicine to understand how bones move in real time, how skin and tissue behave, and ultimately achieve X-ray vision into the human body.”

The Current Landscape

Image-guided procedures are becoming more complex and more common, particularly in spine surgery, interventional radiology, and pain management. Yet many existing navigation systems introduce friction into the workflow. Surgeons are often required to shift their attention between the patient and multiple screens, mentally translating 2D scans into 3D reality. In spine surgery, advanced navigation can involve lengthy setup times, invasive patient preparation, and specialized technical support.

Illuminant Surgical chose spine as its initial focus because of both the clinical need and the opportunity to prove the technology in a demanding environment. “Spine is a really forward-looking, innovative market,” Millares said. “It’s complex surgery, and it can take a lot of hours. There’s a really high bar for technology that makes it into spine surgery.” He also pointed to the company’s access to leading clinicians, including two advisors who are Co-Directors of the USC Spine Center.

From a market perspective, the opportunity is significant. Millares cited more than 1.7 million spine procedures annually in the U.S. alone across fusions, diskectomies, and laminectomies. Beyond spine, the company sees expansion into interventional radiology and pain management, where procedure volumes are even higher. “There are nearly 10 million procedures for pain management every year in the U.S.,” he said. Across spine, interventional radiology, and pain management, Illuminant Surgical estimates a $5.6 to $6 billion opportunity for advanced image guidance.

Inside the Innovation

Illuminant Surgical’s platform, called Skylight™, is built around two core technologies designed to integrate seamlessly into existing workflows. The first is a projection-based visualization system that turns the patient’s body into the display itself. “We’re using projectors to project information directly on the patient’s skin,” Millares explained. “Imagine being able to see the bones, blood vessels, anything that can show up on a scan. We project that in a way that’s spatially accurate, within millimeters of that structure in the body.”

The system consists of a compact cart positioned at the foot of the bed, with a boom arm and optical head aimed at the operative field. When activated, it functions like a surgical lamp, but instead of illumination alone, it displays anatomical information. “You’re able to get cross-sectional views of the patient,” Millares said. “You can create synthetic fluoroscopy-based views and project them directly on the patient’s back. It’s almost like a tattoo on your skin.”

The underlying technology is dynamic projection mapping, similar to what is used in large-scale visual installations, but adapted for the clinical environment. “As the patient moves, we can adapt the visualization in real time so it remains accurate,” he said. “We’re talking millimeter-level accuracy.”

The second core technology is SkinMatch™, Illuminant Surgical’s non-invasive patient registration system. Traditional spine navigation often requires drilling a reference array into the patient’s hip bone. Illuminant Surgical replaces that with adhesive markers placed on the skin. “We’ve developed little stickers you can put onto the patient’s back, arrange them in any pattern, and use them to align the medical image to the patient with sub-millimeter accuracy,” Millares said. “Being able to do this non-invasively is what allows us to expand to lower-acuity procedures.”

Progress and Milestones

Illuminant Surgical is nearing the transition from development into formal verification and validation testing. The company has built multiple prototype systems representative of its intended clinical device and has been using them in preclinical testing. One of the most notable milestones came from porcine model studies. “These are 40- or 50-pound pigs,” Millares said. “Their vertebrae are really small, basically the vertebrae of a small child.”

Using the Skylight platform, Hu placed multiple screws with nearly no margin for error. “He placed eight screws, all right down the middle, achieving our accuracy targets,” Millares said. “If he can do that, and he’s not a spine surgeon, when we get actual spine surgeons in for cadaver testing, it’s going to be a slam dunk.” The company achieved these accuracy targets in August and has since continued hardware verification and electromagnetic compatibility testing.

Illuminant Surgical has also completed validated user studies with surgeon advisors and presented its technology to the global spine community. “We presented at the Global Spine Congress in Rio de Janeiro in May 2025,” Millares said. “We had an amazing response from the surgeon community.”

Looking ahead, the company is preparing for formal verification and validation, with the goal of compiling the data needed for an FDA submission. “In the next few months, we’re looking to build our V&V units, complete the canonical set of testing, and then take all that data and submit it to the FDA,” Millares said. 

Beyond technical progress, the founders were recently recognized for their leadership in medtech innovation. In December 2025, Millares and Hu were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Healthcare. Reflecting on the honor, Millares wrote that medtech is demanding but deeply rewarding. “It requires rigor in clinical testing, the ability to communicate with regulators, discipline in quality, and patience navigating reimbursement and commercialization,” he said. “Yet, in my opinion, it’s the best thing I could ever imagine working on.”

Join Us at LSI USA ‘26

Millares has been selected to present at LSI USA ‘26, March 16th–20th, in front of hundreds of global medical technology companies. Join us in welcoming him to the event in Dana Point, CA, where he will share the latest updates on Illuminant Surgical’s technology and development.