Siloton wins £8.4m Innovate UK contract to speed portable retinal imaging device
UK medical technology start-up Siloton has secured an £8.4 million contract from Innovate UK to accelerate development of its GiraffeOCT portable retinal imaging system, which uses photonic chip technology to bring hospital-grade eye diagnostics into handheld and at-home settings.
UK medical technology start-up Siloton has been awarded an £8.4 million contract from Innovate UK to accelerate development of its portable retinal imaging system, a handheld device that could bring hospital-grade eye diagnostics into clinics and patients' homes.
The company's GiraffeOCT system is built on optical coherence tomography (OCT), a non-invasive optical technique that produces high-resolution, depth-resolved images of biological tissue. OCT is the clinical gold standard for diagnosing retinal diseases, but existing systems are large, expensive and typically confined to hospitals and optometry clinics. Siloton's approach uses photonic chip technology to shrink bulky optical components onto a single coin-sized chip, creating an easy-to-use, handheld binocular-style device.
The Innovate UK contract will support both the in-clinic GiraffeOCT system and an at-home version equipped with built-in automation and guidance so that users can reliably image themselves. According to Alasdair Price, chief executive of Siloton, the contract will reduce the time to market for the medical device by one to two years. It will also allow the company to grow, bringing in new skills around manufacturing and regulation, both of which Price describes as critical to the next stage of the business.
Siloton has been building its clinical evidence base over the past two years. In 2024, it became the first commercial organisation to demonstrate sub-surface imaging of a human retina, using its first-generation Akepa OCT photonic chip. The following year, the company trialled its device with patients for the first time, imaging their retinas to identify the presence and progression of age-related macular degeneration. Testing continued as the system developed, with a second cohort of patients imaged earlier this year.
Independent evaluation has also been carried out. The Project Ginan consortium in Australia purchased a GiraffeOCT research system and assessed its retinal imaging performance with a group of healthy volunteers.
Under the two-year Innovate UK contract, Siloton will work with Sunderland Specialist Eye Hospital in the UK to perform clinical trials of the in-clinic device, giving patients access to the technology during its development. Price said the trials will be based around the prototype for the full medical device, providing additional post-processing and improved ergonomics compared with the company's research-use only product line.
The funding will additionally support development and internal testing of Siloton's second-generation CheetahOCT system, a research-use device designed to measure different layers of the retina and thereby expand the number of conditions it can detect. CheetahOCT incorporates the company's second-generation BlueJay chip, the same architecture used in the system Siloton is building for astronauts, and is expected to be available from early 2027.
Price said the image performance of CheetahOCT will be significantly improved, increasing the number of biomarkers it can measure. This means users will be able to see more of the eye and in finer detail. The device will also be much more compact, as Siloton continues to miniaturise other parts of the system that fall outside the photonic chip.
Siloton was a winner of a business innovation award from the Institute of Physics in 2023. The new contract marks a significant step in the company's effort to move OCT imaging out of specialist hospital settings and into more accessible formats, a shift that could affect how retinal diseases are detected and monitored across the UK and beyond.
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