Shares of diagnostic imaging company RadNet Inc. jumped 9% recently on news that the Sawtelle-based company had been added to the Standard & Poor’s Small Cap 600 stock index.

Separately, RadNet announced it had signed a deal with Santa Clara-based

Whiterabbit.ai Inc. to use Whiterabbit’s artificial intelligence to boost breast cancer screening rates and improve the speed and accuracy of cancer detection.

RadNet was added to the S&P Small Cap 600 on Nov. 20, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. RadNet replaced Gannett Co. Inc., of McLean, Va.

Gannett no longer qualified for the index after being acquired by another S&P Small Cap 600 company, New Media Investment Group Inc. of Fairport, N.Y.

The addition of RadNet to the S&P Small Cap 600 boosts the company’s profile and brings a potential new class of fund investors.

Those are major reasons why shares of RadNet jumped 9% after the news was announced Nov. 14. Shares of the company closed at $18.95 on Nov. 21.

The partnership with Whiterabbit.ai, which was announced on Nov. 7, initially will focus on increasing the percentage of women who come in for annual or biannual mammography screening exams.

The two companies recently completed a pilot program in RadNet’s Delaware and Florida markets, which combined the use of machine learning and patient outreach to bring women into RadNet facilities for their screening exams. 

According to the announcement from RadNet, that trial increased screening rates by about 20%.

Based on the success of the pilot program, RadNet licensed the Whiterabbit.ai technology and back-end operational platform and plans to deploy the platform to all other RadNet markets during the first half of 2020.

“While we cannot necessarily extrapolate the same success we are having in Delaware and Florida to New York, New Jersey, Maryland and California, any material improvement in our mammography volumes represents significant upside to our 2020 budget,” RadNet Chief Executive Howard Berger told analysts in a Nov. 12 earnings call with analysts.

In addition, RadNet has made an unspecified equity investment in Whiterabbit.ai, and the two companies will work to develop personal computer and mobile phone applications and artificial intelligence algorithms to automate the interpretation of mammography images.

“We expect that machine learning, big data applications and automation algorithms will help us to deliver our services more cost effectively, efficiently and accurately, while enhancing the patient experience,” Berger said in the announcement of the partnership with Whiterabbit.ai.

RadNet on Nov. 12 reported third-quarter earnings of $3.2 million, or 6 cents per share, down from $5 million, or 10 cents a share, for the third quarter of 2018. Third-quarter revenue was $292.7 million, up from $242 million for the third quarter of 2018.