Chinese ultrasound maker eSonic signs a cooperation deal with researchers from Mickael Tanter's Paris lab

By Inside BCI · Edited by Velco Dar · October 28, 2026

In a study published in 2023, two rhesus monkeys at Caltech controlled up to eight movement directions using a brain-computer interface that read only ultrasound images of blood volume changes in their brains. The imaging method behind that experiment, functional ultrasound, was introduced in 2011 by Mickael Tanter’s team in Paris. On 22 October researchers from Tanter’s Paris institute, including its director, signed a cooperation deal in Beijing with a Chinese ultrasound company that wants to turn the method into a brain-computer interface platform.

What was announced

eSonic, known in Chinese as 逸超医疗 and also by the initials ESI, held a signing ceremony in Beijing on 22 October and announced the launch of the eSonic brain-computer interface platform. It signed what it describes as a Sino-French strategic cooperation with experts from Tanter’s founding team, naming Mathieu Pernot and Clement Papadacci. The company’s chairman, Jacques Souquet, its chief executive, Le Bin, and its head of ultrasound platform research signed for eSonic.

The company says it will extend ePascal, its ultrafast ultrasound research platform, into brain-computer interface applications, and that the two sides will work together on clinical translation and industrial deployment. It says its functional ultrasound system captures 25,000 frames per second and can acquire brain signals non-invasively through the skull. The release cites no study, dataset or trial registration for the through-skull claim.

Who is involved

Tanter is a research director at Inserm, France’s national health research institute, and led the Physics for Medicine Paris institute, run by Inserm, ESPCI Paris-PSL and CNRS, from 2019 to 2024. He was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in December 2024. Pernot has directed the institute since 2025, and Papadacci is one of its researchers. Tanter’s team published the first functional ultrasound study of the brain in Nature Methods in 2011, in rats.

Tanter co-founded Iconeus in 2016 with Pernot and others. The Paris company sells functional ultrasound systems for neuroscience research and holds exclusive licences to six Inserm patents on the technology. He is also a co-founder of Sonomind, a start-up developing ultrasound treatment for drug-resistant depression.

Souquet founded SuperSonic Imagine, a French ultrasound company, in 2005, with Tanter among its co-founders. US medical group Hologic took a 46 per cent stake in SuperSonic Imagine in August 2019 and bid for the rest. Souquet was elected to the French National Academy of Technologies in 2014. eSonic’s chief executive, Le Bin, also known as Robin Le, previously ran SuperSonic Imagine’s China business and Philips Ultrasound in Greater China.

eSonic was incorporated in Beijing in July 2022 and is building a production site in the city’s economic and technological development zone. It raised more than RMB 100 million in a Series B round in April 2024, co-led by a health industry fund directly under Beijing’s municipal state assets commission and by E-Town Capital, the development zone’s state investment company. In July 2026 the US Food and Drug Administration cleared ePascal ultrasound systems filed by eSonic Technology (Wuhan), which lists Souquet as its contact, for general imaging of anatomical structures, including the head, with SuperSonic Imagine’s Aixplorer Mach 30 as the comparison device. The clearance includes no functional brain imaging or brain-computer interface use.

Why it matters

Functional ultrasound measures changes in blood volume in small vessels, an indirect measure of nearby neural activity. In rats, its developers reported better spatial and temporal resolution than other functional brain imaging methods. Caltech teams, with Tanter as a co-author, decoded intended movements in monkeys in 2021 and ran a closed-loop interface in 2023. A 2024 Caltech-led study without Tanter recorded brain activity in one adult human. Each needed an opening or window in the skull, and the 2024 study states that the technique cannot be performed through the adult human skull.

Sumner Norman, first author of the 2021 study and a co-author of the 2023 study, co-founded Forest Neurotech with Tyson Aflalo and Will Biederman. Norman, Aflalo and Caltech professor Mikhail Shapiro, a co-author of both monkey studies, are among the co-founders of Merge Labs, the brain-computer interface company Sam Altman co-founded, which reportedly raised a US$250 million seed round in January.

The deal also lands as Washington moves to restrict US money in the field. The US Treasury’s proposed outbound investment rule, published in the Federal Register on 26 October, would bar US persons from most new investments in Chinese companies that develop or produce brain-computer interfaces, and its definition names non-invasive systems. The proposed rule applies only to US persons. Comments close on 7 December.

Not disclosed

eSonic has not said whether Inserm, ESPCI Paris-PSL, CNRS or Iconeus is a party to the agreement or has approved it, or whether Tanter attended. It has not disclosed the terms, any payment, which patents or know-how are covered, what the platform includes, or whether it is for research use or intended for clinical approval. InsideBCI found no public comment from the French researchers or institutions as of 28 October.

What to watch

Whether Inserm, ESPCI Paris-PSL or CNRS confirm a role in the agreement.

Whether eSonic publishes data showing functional ultrasound recording through an intact adult human skull.

Whether eSonic seeks Chinese regulatory approval for a brain-computer interface use of ePascal.

Whether the final US Treasury rule keeps non-invasive brain-computer interfaces in its prohibited tier.

Sources

Primary:

Coverage:

Cross-reference to prior InsideBCI coverage:

24 October 2026: US Treasury proposes barring new US private investment in Chinese brain-computer interface companies

news China France eSonic functional-ultrasound Mickael-Tanter Physics-for-Medicine-Paris Inserm Iconeus non-invasive-BCI Merge-Labs COINS-Act