With Cortex Machina, whose head office is located in Lasne, Julien Quertain and Romain Pecher, two of the co-founders of the start-up, wish to democratize and facilitate access to electroencephalograms (EEG), these examinations which record the electrical activity of the brain.
“Romain’s brother is autistic and my mother has multiple sclerosis. Both of us saw the usefulness of these exams as well as the problems encountered: high cost and limited accessibility, mainly. We therefore decided to act .”
The two engineers designed an encephalogram helmet equipped with eight “dry” sensors – unlike the sensors used in hospitals which require a gel – to be placed on the patient’s head. The headset connects via Bluetooth to a computer.
“It is a very easy to use headset. We can even imagine that patients carry out the examination from home by renting the headset, like medical aerosol devices”continues Julien Quertain.
He emphasizes that there are not enough hospitals to monitor patients, which sometimes leads to significant delays in being able to carry out an electroencephalogram. “For epilepsy alone, every three seconds, a person suffers from a seizure in the European Union. With 15,000 hospitals capable of carrying out heavy EEGs, it would take 82 hours a day to monitor everyone. And we are only talking about one disease while many others require this type of examination.”
With the Cortex Machina headset, data is transmitted in real time to the doctor and can be reviewed later because it is recorded. “In addition, we are developing software using artificial intelligence to help analyze data. The cost of the examination will be reduced, it will be easy to perform, both for practitioners and patients and hospitals will be relieved of the burden of especially since certain examinations of this type can last several days.”
Before getting there, the start-up turned to the field of video games. “We have always targeted the medical world, wanting to help patients and doctors. But to test our technology, there is nothing like the gaming sector, more accessible and less expensive.”
Make a character move by thought
Cortex Machina has thus developed a game prototype where the user must move a character forward through their concentration, detected by the brain activity recorded by the headset. In a way, it’s about making it move through thought. Also a way for the start-up to demonstrate its know-how.
Although the start-up itself does not intend to venture further into the sector, it is open to collaborations and wishes to make its technology available to developers, active in various sectors, so that they can integrate their programs of using the headset.
To support its development, Cortex Machina has joined the Walloon technology incubator WSL.
www.cortex-machina.com.
