Flush with the success of its first major installation in the U.S., Halifax Biomedical is out to raise at least $17 million in capital to finance the roll out of six more sites in the next 18 months.

Mabou-based Halifax Biomedical has retained Precipice Capital of Dartmouth to arrange the funding, which it hopes will comprise at least $10 million in equity financing and $7 million in debt. It plans to close the round by June.

“It would be seen as an appropriate raise for the type of work we’re doing,” said CEO Chad Munro in an interview Wednesday.

The size of the fund will require Halifax Biomedical to look outside the region and likely in the U.S. for capital, joining a growing list of companies seeking money in Toronto, Boston or Silicon Valley. The advantages for successful companies often include higher valuations than afforded by local funders, and access to the expertise and contact networks of investors based elsewhere.

Halifax Biomedical’s main product is the roentgen stereophotogrammetric analysis or RSA, which is an X-ray device that allows two simultaneous X-rays to be taken from different angles. It gives a surgeon an immediate and detailed picture of how an implant is taking hold in an orthopaedic patient.

The company installed its RSA last September at Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush, LLC, an orthopaedics group operating out of the Central DuPage Hospital in Chicago. Midwest Orthopaedics is recognized as the No. 3 orthopaedics clinic in the U.S., and its lead hip and knee surgeons Scott Sporer and Wayne Paprosky have been greatly impressed with RSA.

“They really believe in our solution and the technology we’re bringing in, and they promote it and use it with their patients,” said Munro, adding that it has been “really uplifting” to receive such validation of his system.

Halifax Biomedical now wants to install the system this year in three more “supersites”, which Munro defines as facilities that do at least 3,000 hip or knee replacements a year, are leaders in academic research and have other specialties. He said there are about 50 such hospitals in the U.S. and Canada.

He wants another three such installations next year.

Munro and his team looked at how much it would take to market, install and support six systems in supersites and came up with the $17 million figure.

He said his preference in terms of funders would be a strategic investor – a VC fund whose portfolio includes complementary companies in the orthopaedics space or a large company involved in orthopaedics that could assist in the roll out or become a potential acquirer.

In its last fundraising last October, Halifax Biomedical secured a $3 million investment, comprising $2 million from NSBI Venture Capital and $1 million from Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation.

Boston VC guru Mike Grandinetti, a Halifax Biomedical director, recently said he was working with a few Atlantic Canadian companies in raising “serious money” in the U.S.