EnAcuity awarded Innovate UK Smart Grant for groundbreaking surgical imaging software

EnAcuity, a joint spin-out from UCL and Imperial College London, has been awarded a prestigious Innovate UK Smart Grant worth £300,840. This funding will support the development of the first-ever software-only surgical hyperspectral imaging solution in the UK. 

This innovative project aims to reduce complications in minimally invasive surgery by transforming standard surgical cameras into powerful hyperspectral imaging tools without the need for costly hardware upgrades. This technology enables surgeons to see tissue perfusion and critical structures more clearly, helping to prevent unwanted injuries. 

EnAcuity’s founding team includes Professor Daniel Elson in Imperial’s Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery and Department of Surgery and Cancer, Professor Danail Stoyanov, Director of UCL’s Wellcome / EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences (WEISS), and Department of Computer Science, and Dr Tobias Czempiel, Chief Technology Officer, a PhD graduate from TU Munich with extensive experience in surgical data science who holds honorary research fellowships at Imperial and UCL. 

With this grant, the consortium will validate EnAcuity’s software using a unique library of surgical video data from laparoscopic procedures at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.  

Dr Maria Leiloglou, EnAcuity’s co-founder and CEO and an honorary research fellow at UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering and at Imperial, said: “This award comes at a pivotal moment, giving us the momentum we need to accelerate our product’s entry to the market. Receiving funding from Innovate UK is a strong public endorsement of the value of our technology and will help bring us a step closer to delivering a major technical boost that will help prevent surgical complications and improve practice, benefiting patients and surgeons alike”. 

UCL Business has supported EnAcuity in the commercialisation process from the outset, from supporting the team with IP protection to completion of the funding round. The company builds on years of research at Imperial and UCL and has received entrepreneurship support from Imperial’s WE Innovate and the Wellcome Trust Hamlyn Accelerator for Surgical Innovation programmes. 

Weng Sie Wong, Senior Business Manager at UCL Business commented: “We are thrilled to see EnAcuity receive this significant recognition and support from Innovate UK. Their innovative approach to enhancing surgical imaging has the potential to transform laparoscopic surgery techniques and have a substantial impact on healthcare. Congratulations to the entire team for their hard work and dedication.” 

Professor Dan Stoyanov, Director of UCL’s Wellcome / EPSRC Centre for Interventional and Surgical Sciences (WEISS), added: “Innovation in surgical imaging can have a great impact on improving the safety and quality of treatment. This collaboration is an exciting opportunity to explore how we can advance our understanding of light and tissue interaction using software and AI to bring new information into the clinic.”