Paradromics teams up with Siemens Healthineers on brain scans for implant surgery

By Inside BCI · Edited by Velco Dar · October 20, 2026

Before surgeons at University of Michigan Health placed Paradromics’ Connexus implant in a woman with motor neuron disease in June, they had to pinpoint where it should go. The target was a patch of her motor cortex, the strip of brain that directs movement, in the area that controls the muscles used to pronounce words. The device’s 421 electrodes sit on a module smaller than a dime. By mid-September, about three months later, she was speaking her own words through it.

Paradromics uses brain scans to find that spot. On 19 October the Austin brain-computer interface company announced a collaboration with Siemens Healthineers, the German medical technology company, to develop that work into an imaging package that could ultimately be used at medical centres with Siemens Healthineers scanners.

The collaboration

The two companies plan to build one imaging workflow that covers every stage of a brain implant. It runs from deciding whether a patient is a candidate and finding the target area, through planning and guiding the operation, to confirming where the implant ended up and tracking outcomes.

It will combine several kinds of scan, including structural MRI, which maps the brain’s anatomy; functional MRI, which shows which areas are active during a task; blood-vessel imaging, so surgeons can avoid major vessels; and CT, a detailed X-ray scan. The planned package would cover taking the scans, processing and aligning them, producing results for surgical navigation systems, the computers that track a surgeon’s instruments against the patient’s scans, and over time automating more of the analysis.

The work starts from the standard scanning protocols Paradromics already runs on Siemens Healthineers machines. Paradromics’ clinical investigators, including Daniel Rubin of the Mass General Brigham Neuroscience Institute, will help develop it. Speech comes first. Both companies hope to extend the workflow to hand movement and to language recovery after stroke.

They also plan to test the scans against the implant itself, comparing what functional imaging predicted about a brain region with the activity of individual neurons that Connexus records there. The results could improve targeting for later patients.

Why it matters

Paradromics wants its implant procedure to run on equipment hospitals already own. “We want to make things easy for hospitals,” said William Marks, its chief clinical officer. He said hospitals should not have to buy and train staff on custom-built capital equipment, and that most US hospitals use Siemens Healthineers systems.

Precision Neuroscience made a similar move in January, agreeing with Medtronic to integrate its Layer 7 electrode array, a thin film that rests on the brain’s surface, with Medtronic’s StealthStation surgical navigation system to map brain function during neurosurgery. Both brain-computer interface companies are building their procedures around equipment that established medical technology groups have already placed in hospitals.

Donald Hardie, who heads Siemens Healthineers’ MRI business, said the collaboration lets the company explore how imaging, automation and software that supports clinicians’ decisions can help make these procedures more precise and repeatable.

Paradromics is still early. In the US, long-term brain-computer interface implants for communication and computer control are still limited to clinical trials. The FDA approved Connect-One, an early feasibility study and Paradromics’ first long-term clinical study, in November 2025. The study is registered to enrol two participants initially, at UC Davis, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Michigan, and Paradromics has said it plans to add sites and participants. It has announced one Connect-One implant so far. On 8 October Paradromics said two sheep implanted with modules representative of the Connexus electrode technology had recorded stable neural signals for more than four years.

Not disclosed

Paradromics and Siemens Healthineers have not disclosed financial terms, whether the collaboration is exclusive, or a timeline. They have not said whether the workflow will run on other makers’ scanners, whether Siemens Healthineers will sell it to hospitals, whether any part of it will need FDA clearance, or which scans will be used after implantation. Connect-One excludes people who need regular MRI scans.

What to watch

Whether the companies publish the comparison between functional imaging predictions and implant recordings.

Whether the workflow is used to select and plan the next Connect-One implants.

Whether Siemens Healthineers offers it to hospitals as a product.

Whether any part of the workflow goes to the FDA for clearance.

Whether GE HealthCare or Philips signs comparable agreements with brain-computer interface companies.

Sources

Primary:

Coverage:

Cross-reference to prior InsideBCI coverage:

market Paradromics Siemens-Healthineers Connexus Connect-One William-Marks Donald-Hardie Daniel-Rubin Mass-General-Brigham Precision-Neuroscience Medtronic functional-MRI surgical-planning speech-restoration partnerships

The collaboration

Why it matters

Not disclosed

What to watch

Sources

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