Cardiff based Intelligent Ultrasound Group has raised £6.25m in a share placing.

WalesOnline reports the company, previously called Medaphor, raised the money through the conditional issue of 62.5m shares.

Intelligent Ultrasound is also proposing to raise a further £250,000 through the issue of 2.5m shares.

Stuart Gall, chief executive of Intelligent Ultrasound, said “This is an exciting time for the Group. The fund raise will enable us to bring our first Intelligent Ultrasound products to market under the Group’s recently signed OEM agreement, complete the development and launch our second AI product, as well as accelerating the development of a range of follow-on clinical AI products.

“We believe the market for AI-based software tools, in the real-time ultrasound image analysis sector, has considerable potential and we would like to thank both our new and existing shareholders for their support.”

The new investment will be used to complete the development and launch of the first ScanNav products to market under Intelligent Ultrasound’s recently announced OEM agreement, it will also complete the development of the company’s second ScanNav product and launch to market under a second OEM agreement.

ScanNav uses AI to carry out a real time automated review of ultrasound images while a patient is being scanned.

It opens up the possible for pregnant women to have their scans at their local GP surgery or health centre, with the results interpreted by their GP or a nurse.

Medaphor, which was a spinout from Cardiff University, changed its name at the start of the year to Intelligent Ultrasound Group.

Intelligent Ultrasound recently entered into a collaboration with the National Imaging Academy Wales (NIAW) to develop AI tools to aid ultrasound scanning and to enhance ultrasound education.

The share placing is conditional on shareholder approval at the company’s next general meeting at the end of the month.