Real-Time Coil Position Monitoring System for Biomagnetic Measurements

In this paper, we propose a new method for monitoring the position of marker coils. The marker coil is used for indicating spatial relationship between subject's body and magnetic sensor arrays in biomagnetic measurements, such as magnetoencephalography (MEG) and magnetocardiography (MCG). We developed a real-time marker coil position monitoring system combined with a conventional MEG system. In order to achieve simultaneous measurement of MEG signals and marker signals, we separated their frequency bands. The frequency bands of flux-locked loop (FLL) circuits were separated into three parts by three integrators; low-band, mid-band, and high-band. The second and third bands were assigned for MEG signals and marker signals, respectively. This method can avoid the crosstalk of the marker signals to MEG signals. Marker signals were generated from five marker coils driven by five independent sinusoidal current generators. These signals were continuously measured by the high-band of FLL, and then the coils were localized by FFT processing and solving inverse problem. We succeeded in displaying the localized coil position on a PC monitor once per second in real-time.