Adelaide invention revolutionises veterinary x-rays

Your best friend can’t tell you where it hurts but now, thanks to an invention by Adelaide company Micro-X, vets have a better tool to diagnose your pet’s health problems.

Using unique carbon nanotube technology, hospital grade X-ray imaging now available for field hospitals and humanitarian missions

Adelaide company Micro-X (ASX: MX1) has won the Land Forces 2021 National Innovation Award for inventing and manufacturing Rover, a lightweight go-anywhere X-ray machine ruggedised and optimised for high intensity use in field hospitals and remote locations.

Military doctors aim to provide combat soldiers who go in harm’s way with no less a standard of medical care than they can expect at home. However, conventional, hospital-grade mobile x-ray machines are heavy (typically 400 to 600kg), power hungry and very hard to move around on uneven surfaces.

So, prior to the Rover’s development, only small-animal veterinary x-rays units were light enough to be deployed by military forces.

Innovative Adelaide-based manufacturer Micro-X has received funding to develop a game-changing portable brain scanner from the Australian Government’s Medical Research Future Fund.

The scanner will be small enough to be placed in ambulances or Royal Flying Doctor Service aircraft and will give more Australians rapid access to treatment in the crucial first “golden hour” after a stroke.

It is expected to revolutionise stroke care particularly for rural and remote Australians who are twice as likely as city stroke survivors to be left with a serious, lifelong disability.