Member Article

County Durham x-ray innovators land £1m investment

A County-Durham x-ray technology firm has landed £1m of investment to develop develop its products.

NETpark-based business, IBEX, is innovating around x-ray technology and revolutionising the way it is used in the electronics, medical, food and defence sectors.

Founder and director, Dr Gary Gibson said: “The medical uses for x-ray imaging are well known. But x-ray detectors are also used by industrial manufacturers to check on the integrity of their products, and the food industry as part of the quality control process.

“What we have achieved is the ability to get more information from the x-ray image and enable users to interpret and analyse everything in an entirely new way. For example, the IBEX technology allows users to distinguish between changes in both material and thickness, giving the user much more information than conventional systems.

“We can unclutter a busy x-ray image enabling a doctor, quality control manager or other user to look down through layer after layer until they find exactly what they want.

“Doctors can see the exact composition of a tumour, a defence client can strip out the steel casing of a warhead and look at what is going on with the explosive and a food technologist can not just spot impurities inside food packaging but is also able to see if they are glass, bone or plastic.”

IBEX has just secured a second round of funding from the Finance for Business North East Proof of Concept Fund – managed by Northstar Ventures – with the balance of the £1m total investment coming from an unnamed corporate investor.

Dr Neil Loxley, ex-CEO of Bede plc, has recently joined IBEX as CEO to allow Gary Gibson to concentrate on the technology. With seven employees, it has just recruited an apprentice and a software engineer and is looking to add a physicist and a further software specialist to the team.

It will be using the new funding to develop its technology further, prior to a launch in the industrial testing market later in the year – before addressing opportunities in the medical imaging and food inspection sectors.

Richard Exley, investment manager at Northstar, said: “IBEX has a great team in place with the potential to be disruptive in global markets which is exactly where we want to be. It has strong IP and an innovative and exciting product.

“There is already a huge amount of interest from a number of market sectors, including the medical sector where the technology can potentially lead to significantly reduced radiation doses as well as earlier and better detection of tumours.

“This is the second time that we have invested money into IBEX from our Proof of Concept Fund and this demonstrates our absolute confidence in this company.”

The Finance for Business North East Proof of Concept Fund is backed by the European Regional Development Fund and the European Investment Bank.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .