4Sight – The Company

4Sight Imaging is an agile and growing imaging sciences technology company based in Bolton Greater Manchester.  It was founded in 2004 by a team with a successful history in research, innovation and technology transfer, and which had just emerged from a successful venture backed spin out from the University of Manchester when it was sold to a US multinational.

The objective of 4Sight was to undertake the research and development to underpin next gen image analysis techniques and then to market products and services based on this technology platform.  Initial work from 2004 to 2007 led to a number of international patents being granted.  Research has continued ever since to further extend the technology.

4Sight has developed a range of products using its imaging science platform (known as Autonomous Image Interpretation – AI²), these include a range of industry leading and commercially successful vehicle surveillance products as well as enabling technology supplied to third party (OEM) customers in the automated industrial inspection market, where the use of 4Sight technology confers significant competitive advantage to its users.  As well as investing heavily in its own on-going research & development programme, 4Sight also undertakes imaging science research under contract for the Defence and Science Technology Laboratory of the MoD.

The skills of the 4Sight team extend well beyond their capacity to innovate and deliver real-world capable applications using new imaging science technologies, but also include the capability to develop up to national scale, secure, intelligence data mining and analysis systems; engineer advanced and innovative hardware, sensor and optical systems; manage and support networks of OEM and Systems Integration partners, resellers, distributions and users across the world.

4Sight is engaged in extending its vehicle surveillance proposition, which itself evolved from our industry-leading ANPR solution, into a suite of capabilities aimed at the broader application area of Highway Surveillance.  Of primary importance in this endeavour is 4Sight’s ability to integrate its own proprietary technology with “best of breed” third party technologies and deliver these as practical, uniquely capable products.

4Sight Senior Management Team

Mr Christopher Brook Jackson – Chief Executive Officer

Brook Jackson is a graduate of the University of Liverpool (Physics 2.1) has been involved in the development of imaging science technology, products, services and businesses since 1983. He is the CEO of 4Sight Imaging Ltd. and has managed a number of projects from research through development to full scale commercial deployment. The most notable of these was a project in excess of £4m for the development of an Automatic Optical Inspection system for use in the electronics manufacturing industry, where an entirely new technology and approach was successfully introduced to the market.

Latterly he has managed the development of products for the automated inspection of Fuel Cell components, video quality assessment tools for the evaluation of intelligence gathering imaging systems and early stage “UK market proving” Automated Number Plate Recognition systems.

Dr Andrew Hill – Chief Technical Officer

Andrew has a first class honours degree (Computer Science/Mathematics, 1985) and a D. Phil. (Computer Science, Stable Closed Methods for Thermal Regenerator Simulations, 1988) from the University of York. He was a Research Associate for 8 years with the Wolfson Image Analysis Unit, University of Manchester, working in computer vision research for medical image analysis, and has authored/co-authored over 20 technical papers. Previously Andrew was senior software engineer then software manager (2½ years combined) for ‘kestra’, a venture capital spin-out from the Wolfson Image Analysis Unit, and then Software manager for ‘CyberOptics’ (5 years), an American corporation that acquired kestra.

Andrew has developed patented technology for image pattern matching (Autonomous Image Interpretation – AI2). Andrew’s skills include: mathematician/vision scientist, experience in taking products from concept to market, software management and object oriented design.

Marcus Boden – Business Development Director

Educated at Burton technical college and Staffordshire University in mechanical engineering and latterly business management, Marcus has over 16 years’ Board level experience in product development, commercialisation and data-driven, long-term strategic planning; primarily in the Automated Vehicle ID sector. Marcus has 10 years’ experience of international strategic business development, within both the public and private sectors. He has participated on ISO working groups in the development of international standards and has numerous patents granted in the field of Auto ID and ANPR.

Simon Jackson – Lead Developer

Simon Jackson has a Master’s degree in theoretical physics (MPhys Hons.) University of York. Training in lens optics, mathematics, statistics mathematical modelling with a dissertation in molecular dynamics and 8 years of experience of formalised software & data-base design and development (C++, C#, Java, SQL, HTML, ASP.Net, web services).

Experienced in working in collaborative projects as part of an extended team and photographic/lens optics, image optimisation methods and technologies gained from work as a professional photographer.