European Investment Bank lends €20 million to SamanTree Medical
SamanTree Medical, a Liège-based MedTech startup focused on intraoperative imaging, has secured €20 million in financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to accelerate development and commercialization of its Histolog Scanner, a confocal microscopy system designed to provide rapid, high-resolution images of excised tissue during surgery.
The financing is backed by InvestEU, the European Union’s flagship investment programme aimed at mobilising more than €372 billion in additional investment between 2021 and 2027. The EIB described the transaction as part of its broader effort to help European medical technology companies scale, using venture debt as a tool to support growth in capital-intensive sectors such as medical devices.
Company plans: product development and expansion in Europe and the US
Olivier Delporte, CEO of SamanTree Medical, said the EIB support marks “an important milestone” and will allow the company to accelerate development of the Histolog Scanner while expanding its commercial presence across Europe and the United States.
Delporte also pointed to the EIB’s due diligence process as validation of the company’s technology roadmap and longer-term ambitions in real-time imaging for surgical settings, where decisions must often be made quickly and with limited information.
Why the deal stands out in European MedTech funding
The €20 million EIB backing places SamanTree Medical among the larger recent European financings for clinically focused imaging innovation, particularly in hardware. In 2025, several adjacent rounds in imaging and HealthTech were notably smaller, reflecting a broader market trend in which software-led healthcare startups often raise earlier and lighter funding than device makers.
Examples cited in the wider ecosystem include PIUR IMAGING, a Vienna-based medical imaging company that raised €5.6 million to scale tomographic 3D ultrasound technology across Europe and the US, and Paris-based HealthTech startup Juisci, which secured a €5.5 million seed round to build an AI platform aimed at helping healthcare professionals access scientific knowledge more efficiently.
Another major 2025 transaction came from Lyon-based venture studio M2care, which raised €26 million to expand a model focused on launching and developing new medical and healthcare technology companies. Excluding SamanTree’s EIB financing, those cited rounds represent roughly €37 million invested across imaging-related and adjacent HealthTech segments during 2025.
Against that backdrop, SamanTree’s funding highlights continued institutional appetite for capital-intensive medical device development—particularly where clinical workflow improvements could translate into measurable cost and outcome benefits for health systems.
EIB: venture debt as a lever for European medical innovation
Alessandro Izzo, an EIB Director, said the investment reflects the bank’s long-standing commitment to advancing medical innovation in Europe. He framed venture debt as a mechanism that can help entrepreneurs accelerate growth and deliver technologies to patients sooner, while supporting the development of “key medical tech companies” within Europe.
Backed by InvestEU, the operation also aligns with EU policy goals to strengthen strategic sectors, improve patient outcomes, and support innovation capacity across member states.
What the Histolog Scanner does in the operating room
Founded in 2014, SamanTree Medical positions its mission around improving oncologic surgery through imaging that can help clinicians assess whether abnormal tissue remains after a tumour is removed. The company’s core proposition is speed: enabling surgeons and pathologists to assess excised tissue while the patient is still in the operating room.
According to the company, the Histolog Scanner can generate histology-like images in about one minute without damaging the specimen. It reportedly captures nearly 30,000 images simultaneously, rather than scanning one at a time, which is intended to reduce the time between tissue removal and clinical interpretation.
In practical terms, intraoperative imaging aims to reduce uncertainty around surgical margins—whether cancerous or abnormal cells remain at the edges of removed tissue—an issue that can lead to follow-up procedures, longer recovery, and additional costs.
Clinical use and reported outcomes
SamanTree Medical said its technology has been used in more than 6,000 patients to date. The company highlighted results from breast-conserving surgery, citing the SHIELD study, where reoperation rates were reported to drop from 30% to 10% when clinicians used Histolog images for assessment—an alleged 67% reduction.
The company also pointed to research comparing Histolog with intraoperative frozen-section analysis, commonly considered a gold standard in some settings. For prostatectomy procedures, it said Histolog delivered similar performance while offering time savings: imaging and interpretation reportedly takes 5–20 minutes compared with 45–60 minutes for frozen-section analysis.
In additional comparisons to conventional pathology, physicians using Histolog images have reported sensitivity ranging from 73% to 91% and specificity from 91% to 100%, according to the company. SamanTree further cited studies suggesting that faster intraoperative assessment can support more nerve-sparing surgical decisions, which may reduce the risk of erectile dysfunction following radical prostatectomy.
How the €20 million will be used
SamanTree Medical said the financing will support research, development, and innovation activities, including continued advancement of the Histolog Scanner. The company also intends to use the funding to expand its commercial footprint in Europe and the United States, signalling a push beyond product development toward broader market adoption.
For European MedTech, the transaction underscores how public-backed capital—through instruments such as EIB venture debt and InvestEU guarantees—continues to play a central role in scaling medical device innovation, where regulatory, clinical validation, and manufacturing requirements can make growth more expensive and slower than in software-only healthcare models.
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