Cortirio's EIC Accelerator Headset for Stroke Scans in Ambulances

"For many patients, the first picture of what is happening in the brain comes only after they have been transported to a hospital," Cortirio's website says, and Marc Ribo, the Vall d'Hebron neurologist it quotes, says "we lose hours getting patients to us from other hospitals." Cortirio, a small British company, is building a headset that shines near-infrared light into the head and turns what comes back into maps of blood and oxygen in the brain. Its technology page says the aim is a picture that can be sent ahead to the clinical team while the patient is still on the road.

The EIC Accelerator selected the project, Vascascope, at its 1 October 2025 cut-off as a grant-only award. CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,487,530 for a project running from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2028, and the company lists the EIC Accelerator among its funders on its website. Four months after the project's start date, the same website states that the technology "is currently for research use only; its clinical benefit has not been validated", and that it is not approved for clinical use anywhere.

Light instead of X-rays

The method underneath is functional near-infrared spectroscopy, which the NETPark profile notes has been used in medical research for many years, and whose readings of oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin (HbO and HbR) appear in the company's own illustrations. Cortirio's technology page says its hardware "captures optical signals across the head, and our software turns them into real-time maps of brain oxygenation and haemodynamics." The pictures on that page are marked as illustrations, not patient data.

The two US patents show where the company's own engineering sits. US 11,864,866, granted in January 2024 to inventors Patrick Beldon and Paul Macey, reads pairs of photodiodes both as a difference signal and individually, to capture fine contrast and sharp edges in the same scan. US 12,402,793, granted in September 2025, adds non-optical signals such as ultrasound or electrical currents sent through the head, and uses them to constrain the optical image when the sensors do not sit perfectly on the scalp.

How sharp the result is depends on whom one reads. A company profile on the NETPark science park website says the technology "increases the spatial resolution of fNIRS to the level of MRI and CT scanning." In an undated NIHR podcast, Beldon described the resolution as well below MRI or CT, and the goal as enough detail for a treatment decision at the point of care. No peer-reviewed paper by the company comparing its images with CT or MRI was found in searches on 4 November 2026.

What Vascascope promises

The CORDIS summary sets out three uses: helping paramedics recognise large vessel occlusion strokes in the ambulance, giving clinicians real-time feedback during mechanical thrombectomy, and continuous monitoring in intensive care. The project is to finalise the device, run in-human trials in ambulance and hospital settings, and gather the evidence for FDA 510(k) clearance and CE marking.

The case it makes rests on the type of stroke the device would have to spot. The summary states that large vessel occlusion strokes cause 95% of stroke-related deaths and 62% of disability, and that thrombectomy "triples recovery when delivered within 6 hours." Those are the applicant's figures, quoted in the project summary; the EIC does not verify them.

1. Finalise a wearable deviceIn progressTwo granted US patents and open engineering roles on the company site; no finished product is shown.
2. In-human trials in ambulances and hospitalsNot yet publicNo trial registration or results found on 4 November 2026; the podcast describes earlier use alongside CT during endovascular surgery.
3. Detect large vessel occlusion before hospitalNot shownNo accuracy figure against CT has been published.
4. FDA 510(k) and CE markingNot yetThe website says the device is not approved in any geography.

The clinical record so far

What exists in public is a list of partners and a description of early tests. The company's website names Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Barts Health NHS Trust, Hospital Universitario Vall d'Hebron in Barcelona, National University Hospital in Singapore and the University of Cambridge as partners and collaborators, without saying what each one does. It also quotes three clinicians: Marc Ribo of Vall d'Hebron, Redi Rahmani of the University of Louisville and Paul Bhogal of the Royal London Hospital.

In the NIHR podcast, Beldon described tests on artificial heads, induced or simulated strokes in healthy volunteers, and use of the device on patients during endovascular procedures alongside CT. He said ethics documents had been submitted to join a stroke study already running in Singapore, and that a study at the Royal London Hospital and Vall d'Hebron was planned but "not 100 confirmed". He also said the company was "aiming to get this on the market in two years". The podcast carries no date, so neither statement can be placed in time, and no results from these studies were found in public sources.

A small balance sheet and new shares

The public funding record consists of UK grants and one announced seed round. A GOV.UK release of 13 December 2017 named it among Innovate UK winners for portable brain imaging at accident scenes, without stating the amount. In October 2020 o2h Ventures announced that its human health EIS fund had led an investment with the University of Surrey and KQ Labs, also without an amount. In March 2024 UKRI listed Cortirio among ten winners sharing more than £6 million in a dementia biomarker competition, with a project titled "Portable brain imaging: a biomarker platform for dementia".

The filed accounts are small-company accounts without a profit and loss account. They show share premium unchanged at £738,347 from 2021 to 2025, so no new equity was recorded in those years. Cash at the year end fell from £160,246 in 2023 to £47,739 in July 2025, while net assets stood at £370,397, including £136,192 of intangible assets and £153,052 of trade debtors. Accumulated losses narrowed from £429,170 to £368,065 in the 2025 year, and the accounts note an R&D tax credit received that year. The directors prepared them on a going concern basis.

Two charges appear in the charges register: one in favour of Sprk Capital created in December 2023 and satisfied in January 2025, and one in favour of HSBC Innovation Banking created in June 2024 and still outstanding. The register does not show the amounts.

Equity started to move again in 2026. Returns of allotment filed on 31 May and 3 November 2026 record 94,244 new ordinary shares allotted for cash in April and September, with amounts paid of £184,072, £70,028 and £273,666.40, each equal to £5.60 a share. The filings do not name the buyers, and no announcement of a round was found on the company website or in searches on 4 November 2026.

Grant only, and why that matters for a UK company

The award is grant only, and for a UK company no other form was available. The UK government's explainer on the association agreement signed on 4 December 2023 lists the EIC Fund, which provides equity to EIC Accelerator companies, among the parts of Horizon Europe that UK entities cannot join. A UK winner therefore cannot take the equity half of a blended award, and has to raise its follow-on capital elsewhere.

On policy, the project fits the Stroke Action Plan for Europe, drawn up by the European Stroke Organisation and the Stroke Alliance for Europe, which sets 2030 targets that include treating at least 90% of stroke patients first in a dedicated stroke unit. Sending the right patient to the right centre the first time is the problem Cortirio says it wants to solve; whether a near-infrared headset can make that call reliably in an ambulance is what the Vascascope trials are funded to test.

Cortirio has not been asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.