A Nottingham-linked University spin-out that builds wearable brain scanners using tiny quantum sensors inside a lightweight helmet.
Cerca Magnetics makes a new kind of brain scanner. Normal scanners that measure the brain's tiny magnetic signals, called MEG machines, are huge, need to be cooled with liquid helium and ask the patient to stay perfectly still. Cerca's scanner, known as OPM-MEG, uses small quantum sensors called optically pumped magnetometers, each about the size of a LEGO brick, built into a lightweight helmet. Because the sensors sit close to the head and move with it, people can walk, play and even have a seizure while being scanned, and the same system can be used on babies and children as well as adults. It is used to study epilepsy, dementia, multiple sclerosis and concussion.
The company grew out of research at the University of Nottingham, where brain imaging work stretches back to Nobel prizewinner Sir Peter Mansfield. Its team has said the idea of a spin-out was pushed forward by researcher Dr Elena Boto and by Professor Matthew Brookes, who leads the university's MEG research and is now chairman. Cerca was formed in 2020 as a joint venture between the university and Magnetic Shields Limited, with David Woolger as chief executive. David Woolger has said the company's goal is to make advanced brain imaging more accessible. The founders say they want to answer big questions about how the brain works and to fill gaps that other scans cannot.
Cerca is a Nottingham-based UK company, and the university's own news describes it that way. Its systems have been sold to neuroscience centres in 12 countries across North America, Europe, Asia and Australasia, with research partners such as Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, where the technology has been used to study autism. The Ministry of Defence has also commissioned Cerca to build what it calls the world's first fully mobile OPM-MEG scanner, so that the effects of blast exposure on military personnel can be measured at training sites. A Sunday Times table lists Kent as its location, but Nottingham is the best-evidenced base.
Cerca is a small, science-led team, and published material about its day-to-day culture is thin, so we do not claim anything about it here. What is clear is that its people mix physicists, sensor and magnetics engineers, software developers and clinical scientists, working with doctors and university researchers on real patients' problems. The company ranked 15th in the Sunday Times 100 Tech 2026 list of Britain's fastest-growing private technology companies.
A company like this employs people in several kinds of role: hardware and electronics engineers, physicists, software and data specialists, regulatory and quality staff who prepare the scanner for medical approval, and manufacturing, sales and customer support teams. The scanner is on the approval pathway for clinical use in the UK and the USA, so people who like medical technology, standards and testing have a natural place alongside the researchers.
Website: www.cercamagnetics.com
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