Silveray Raises £4M Seed Extension to Launch the World's First Flexible Digital X-Ray Film

November 18, 2024

Silveray, a Manchester-based deep-tech company developing flexible digital X-ray film technology, has secured £4 million in a seed extension round. The investment was led by Northern Gritstone, the science and technology investor backed by the Universities of Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield, with co-investment from existing backer ACF Investors and new investors Empirical Ventures, Deeptech Labs, and Hamamatsu Ventures. The strategic participation of Hamamatsu Ventures — the corporate venture arm of Hamamatsu Photonics, the world’s leading manufacturer of photodetectors and X-ray imaging components — is particularly significant, bringing deep industry expertise and global market access to the company’s syndicate. Silveray was originally a spinout from the Advanced Technology Institute at the University of Surrey in 2018, before relocating to Greater Manchester in 2022 to work closely with materials specialists at the University of Manchester. The new capital brings Silveray’s total funding to £6.5 million and will be used to complete development of its first Digital X-ray Film product for an industrial launch in 2025.

X-ray imaging underpins inspection and quality control across dozens of industries — from welds in oil and gas pipelines to aircraft structural components to medical diagnostics — yet the core technology used in many industrial settings is still analogue radiographic film. Film must be chemically processed after exposure, which takes time, requires darkroom facilities, and generates chemical waste. Digital flat-panel detectors exist but are rigid, expensive, and physically limited: they cannot be wrapped around a pipe, bent into a confined space, or used to inspect curved or complex geometries. Many industrial inspection scenarios specifically require a flexible detector that can conform to the geometry of the object being examined.

Silveray’s Digital X-ray Film (DXF) technology addresses this gap directly. The company has developed a novel nanoparticle-based semiconductor material that converts incident X-ray photons directly into electrical signals, which are then processed into a digital image at the point of exposure. This direct conversion approach — as opposed to the indirect conversion used in conventional flat-panel detectors — allows the detector to be made thin and flexible, similar in form to a mobile phone screen, while maintaining high resolution. The film can be wrapped around pipes and fed into tight spaces to detect corrosion, weld defects, and structural flaws that rigid detectors cannot reach. Generated images are immediate, digital, and can be stored and transmitted without chemical processing.

Early customer engagement in the industrial sector has generated strong commercial interest, and the company is targeting revenue generation in 2025. Silveray also plans to apply its technology to healthcare applications at a later stage: a flexible mammography detector, for example, could be shaped around the breast without the uncomfortable compression required by current rigid plate systems, potentially improving both patient experience and diagnostic yield.

Northern Gritstone CEO Duncan Johnson described the progress made since the initial 2023 investment as phenomenal, and highlighted Silveray’s combination of technical innovation and commercial orientation. ACF Investors’ Tim Mills noted the potential for Silveray’s flexible detectors to radically improve the safety, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness of X-ray imaging. Hamamatsu Ventures CEO Katsuhiro Kobayashi said the nanoparticle-based direct conversion material could completely disrupt the X-ray imaging market and committed to a strategic collaboration to accelerate Silveray’s growth.

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