EIC Accelerator Report Card: FEops' Heart Implant Simulations

Before a cardiologist pushes a folded heart valve or a left atrial appendage occluder through a catheter, someone has to choose its size and position, usually from CT measurements. FEops, a Ghent company founded in July 2009, sells software that goes a step further: it simulates how the metal frame of a specific device will deform inside one patient's anatomy, and predicts leaks and pressure points before the operation. In the European Commission's list of the October 2019 EIC Accelerator pilot winners, FEops NV is the only company named for the HEARTguide project, with blended finance: a grant plus an offer of EIC equity.

The grant came to €3,214,583.75 of a €4,682,512.50 project that ran from 1 December 2019 to 30 November 2021, according to CORDIS. The equity did follow, but late and small: the EIC Fund joined a €3.3 million convertible loan in October 2022 and turned its claim of €1,783,833.33 into shares in December 2023. In July 2024 Materialise, the Leuven 3D printing and medical software group, bought 100% of FEops for €2,985,000, less than the EU grant alone.

Where FEops Stands Now

FEops still exists as a company, now as a subsidiary. The Belgian company register lists FEops NV as active, with two directors appointed on 18 July 2024, the day Materialise completed the purchase according to its annual report for 2024. Trade press reported the deal the same month, without a price (TCT Magazine, 3D Printing Industry); the price, €2,985,000, appears only in Materialise's filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The FEops website now calls it "a materialise company" and counts 11,461 patients in 466 hospitals in 38 countries.

The founding team has partly gone. Co-founder and CTO Peter Mortier resigned as director and day-to-day manager with effect from 7 November 2025, and the sole shareholder reappointed the two directors named in July 2024 and co-founder Matthieu De Beule for another year at its meeting of 23 June 2026, according to filings in the Belgian Official Gazette of 25 March 2026 and 1 October 2026. FEops is also a partner in CDTnet, a Horizon Europe network on cardiovascular digital twins that started on 1 September 2026, with an EU contribution of €288,540 to FEops, according to CORDIS.

The Technology: A Digital Twin of One Heart and One Implant

Transcatheter procedures replace or plug parts of the heart without opening the chest. In TAVI, a collapsed aortic valve is expanded inside the old one; in left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO), a small umbrella-like device seals a pouch where clots form. Both rely on choosing the right size and depth. Standard planning tools measure the anatomy on CT scans. HEARTguide adds finite element simulation, a form of engineering modelling, to predict how the deformable implant and the tissue will push on each other, and uses AI to segment the scans automatically, according to the project's final CORDIS report. The company's planned business model was to have implant manufacturers include HEARTguide in the device package they sell to hospitals.

In the United States the simulation is cleared for one procedure. FDA records show a De Novo decision for FEops HEARTguide dated 8 September 2021, a 510(k) clearance on 25 February 2022, clearance of the ALPACA measurement tool for LAAO and TAVI planning on 6 June 2023, and a further clearance on 25 November 2025 for a simulation application whose stated use is LAAO device implantation only. The company announced US authorisation for the LAAO workflow with Abbott's Amulet and Boston Scientific's Watchman FLX in 2022; reports date it to April 2022 or July 2022. No FDA clearance for TAVI simulation could be found.

The Clinical Evidence

The main trial ran during the EIC project and was part-funded by it. PREDICT-LAA randomised 200 patients to standard CT planning or planning with FEops simulations for Abbott's Amulet occluder, and was published in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions in 2023, listing Abbott, FEops and Horizon 2020 grant 945698 as funders. Its primary endpoint, leakage beyond the device lobe or a clot on the device, occurred in 41.8% of standard patients and 28.9% of simulation patients, a difference that missed statistical significance (P = 0.08). Secondary results were significant: complete closure in 61.1% against 44.0%, 103 devices used against 118, and 104 repositionings against 195. The authors called it "a trend toward better procedural outcomes".

What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows

The proposal summary on CORDIS promised an AI-powered, automated next generation of HEARTguide, validated in four clinical trials with more than 700 patients, a commercial launch in 2024 in the EU, US, China and Japan, and growth to "125 employees by 2024 while generating a positive EBITDA of €10M". The final report, for the period to 30 November 2021, says new models were built for pulmonary and mitral valve replacement and new devices, AI segmentation was trained, the features were validated "in over 700 patients", market clearance was obtained in the EU under the MDR, the US, Australia and Canada, more than 2,200 cases were simulated, and more than 10 people were hired.

1. AI-automated next-generation platformDeliveredAI segmentation and landmark detection per CORDIS; ALPACA tool FDA-cleared in 2023.
2. Clinical validation, 700+ patientsPartly700+ patients reported; the randomised PREDICT-LAA trial missed its primary endpoint (P = 0.08).
3. Market approval in EU and USDeliveredMDR, FDA, Australia and Canada per CORDIS; US simulation cleared for LAAO, not TAVI.
4. Launch in China and JapanNot deliveredNo approval or launch announced by FEops or Materialise.
5. 125 employees and €10M EBITDA by 2024Missed31.4 FTE and a €3.43M net loss in 2024; sold that year.

The technical work was done on time, within the 24 months. The commercial targets, which were the reason for an Accelerator rather than a research grant, were not met: the forecast assumed a company four times larger than FEops ever became.

The Money: Grant, Loan, Conversion, Sale

FEops' accounts, filed with the National Bank of Belgium and summarised by Companyweb, show the grant years were the company's best: the loss shrank from €1.37 million in 2019 to €75,334 in 2020. After the project ended, losses grew to €2.07 million in 2022, €2.35 million in 2023 and €3.43 million in 2024. From 2022 the directors reported, in the Dutch-language accounts, a "material uncertainty" about the company's ability to continue, and in the 2023 accounts they listed a new convertible loan and an "M&A transaction" among the measures to keep going. Belgian small-company accounts do not show revenue.

The blended finance came in two parts. The 2021 accounts say the EIC Fund had offered to provide capital "in the form of a convertible loan" on top of the grant, and FEops announced a €3.3 million convertible loan from its existing investors and the EIC Fund on 28 October 2022. On 12 December 2023 the lenders converted their claims, with 8% interest to 30 September 2023, into 78,244 new shares at about €45.60 each, according to the deed published in the Belgian Official Gazette. The EIC Fund's claim of €1,783,833.33 bought 39,123 shares, out of 462,819 after the deal. The balance sheet confirms it: long-term financial debt fell from €3,414,023 at the end of 2022 to €36,452 at the end of 2023.

Seven months later Materialise bought all 462,819 shares for €2,985,000, according to its Form 20-F. FEops had €185,000 of cash on the day, and Materialise valued its technology at €2,938,000. How the price was split among shareholders is not public, and the company does not appear in the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, checked on all 16 pages for this article. By simple arithmetic, the converted loans of €3.57 million were worth more than the price paid for the whole company. In December 2024 Materialise added €5.5 million of new capital, which cleared FEops' financial debt, according to the Official Gazette and the 2024 accounts.

The subsidiary has not turned around yet. Materialise booked €568,000 of FEops revenue between 18 July and 31 December 2024. In 2025 FEops lost €2.25 million, its cash fell to €140,099 and average staff to 22.6. Its net assets, which Belgian law counts without capitalised development costs, came to €50,328.65, below a quarter of its €7.18 million capital, which obliges the board to put the company's future to the shareholder. The directors chose to continue, citing larger projects in negotiation, research services for Materialise and a US product expansion delayed by "longer than originally expected discussions with the FDA" (translated).

Why Europe Should Care

Patient-specific simulation is what the Commission's European Virtual Human Twins Initiative, launched in December 2023, sets out to bring into clinical use, with surgical planning among its examples. Fewer devices and repositionings, as PREDICT-LAA found, also mean less radiation and lower procedure costs. FEops stayed in Europe: its buyer is a Belgian group, and the CDTnet network keeps it in EU research on cardiovascular digital twins.

The Verdict

FEops, Materialise and the EIC have not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.