In about two years, a Halifax startup that grew out of Dalhousie University plans to open a production facility for cutting-edge ultrasound devices that allow sharper images of such organs as eyes and skin.
Daxsonics Ultrasound is designing and prototyping array-based, high-frequency ultrasound devices and plans to begin production in 2017.
“We provide higher resolution and a sharper, deeper image than what’s on the market now,” said CEO and co-founder Rob Adamson during an interview in the company’s laboratory.
The company is a classic case of transforming university research into a viable business and making sales contacts through the academic world.
Daxsonics came about as a result of the research into high-frequency ultrasounds by Jeremy Brown, the other co-founder, at Dal’s biomedical engineering department.
Low-frequency ultrasounds penetrate deep into tissue and are used to view, for instance, fetuses in a womb. But they produce such blurred images it takes a trained eye to tell what sex the baby is.
“Traditional ultrasounds work at anywhere from two to five megahertz, but we work at 30 to 50 megahertz,” said Adamson.
High-frequency ultrasounds produce far sharper images, but they are unable to penetrate deep into tissues. That means they are used to produce images of shallow tissue and for endoscopic procedures in which a catheter goes into the body to view internal organs. The Daxsonics device will make images sharper still.
Brown researched the use of several microphones and sensors at once, known as array-based ultrasound, in high-frequency ultrasounds and discovered ways of producing sharper images than single-point ultrasounds.
He and Adamson came together to form Daxsonics to commercialize the research. By presenting papers at academic conferences, they were able to meet industry representatives, leading to a contract with one major American medical device provider.
Adamson said Daxsonics has changed its business model a few times and only in the last year has found a path to the market. The founders set up a micro-fabrication facility at the Innovacorp Enterprise Centre in Halifax and have nine people working toward their first product.
It looks like a single ear bud for an iPod. It holds about eight concentric assemblies of microphones and sensors, and can move to scan over a surface. Adamson said the construction is so fine that the team has had to borrow manufacturing techniques from the semiconductor industry.
So far, they have done feasibility studies for their American client — who Adamson declined to name — and have begun the design of the first product they plan to bring to market. In 2017, they plan to open a 2,500-square-foot micro-fabrication facility, in which six or seven employees will build the devices.
What’s interesting about this project is that Adamson and Brown don’t think they’ll need to raise equity capital to establish their manufacturing facility. They believe they can finance it though existing public programs, bank loans and deposits from customers.
It means Daxsonics will likely be a closely held company as it grows.
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