Combining magnetic sensing and imaging systems may improve brain diagnosis and imaging
July 27, 2012
Innovative MEG-MRI device combines magnetoencephalography (MEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies (credit: Aalto University)
The first system for mapping the human brain that combines whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology has been developed by a research team headed by Aalto University in Finland.
Merging these two technologies will produce unprecedented accuracy in locating and imaging brain electrical activity non-invasively, and should improve cancer diagnosis and the accuracy of brain mapping of patients, says professor Risto Ilmoniem.
Background
MEG measures the brain’s electrical activity, using highly sensitive superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) coupled to superconducting receiver (pickup) coils. MRI uses powerful magnets and radio frequency fields to image brain structure and blood flow.
When these two techniques are used separately, the image registration accuracy can be compromised because of the movement of the patient’s head, so the image it provides may not be accurate enough for precise brain surgery.
It has not been possible to combine MEG and MRI systems in the past because their magnetic fields interfered with one another. However, recently, MRI using SQUIDs has been demonstrated. This approach, called ultra-low-field (ULF) MRI, uses magnetic fields as low as 20 mT (microteslas) — 150,000 times weaker — for signal encoding, overcoming the magnetic interference problem.
MRI sensors, with MEG sensor mesh in the center (credit: Aalto University/Magnetic Resonance in Medicine)
Combining MEG and MRI technologies
Fusing these two technologies produces localization accuracy that was not possible with MRI or MEG alone. It will also allow for brain imaging of patients with metal implants, and will not scare children or make people feel claustrophobic.
The researchers were able to achieve MRI imaging quality comparable to 3T MRI machines and a commercial MEG device.
In the future, this development may also reduce costs because images can be obtained in one session rather than two, Ilmoniemi says.
The project is coordinated by Aalto University and includes 13 research groups in five countries. The research project is part of the European Commission Seventh Framework Program.
Comments (8)
by Snake Oil Baron
There are dyes which will fluoresce in the presence of electrical fields which they were using to examine localized fields inside cells. Also, I heard they were using IR dyes to find sentinel lymph nodes with less surgery because they can be seen by IR cameras unlike traditional dyes where you need to expose the suspected nodes surgically to see if the dye has arrived from the cancerous area. If they have a dye which can do both–flouresces in an electric field AND does so in a wavelength that can be detected through the skull (or if they can develope one), it might alow a third channel of information about what is going on inside the brain as it functions.
by Bri
A cool thing about squids, is that they can be miniaturized. In many respects, MRI is a lot like sonar. It pings the atoms and then listens for the response. This again can be performed in miniature. All the way down to the size of a blood cell. If they have taken away the need for those magnetic coils, they have taken away one of the biggest causes of expenseand energy consumption. This opens the door for a rapid miniaturization. This principal utilized at the cellular level would be able to record all the synaptic contacts and states. Not that far away!!!!
by Gorden Russell
So Gator, do you think this will map the brain for our conciousness uploads?
by GatorALLin
….reply to G.Russell……I love that they are finding better ways to understand how our brain works, or how we can combine 2-3 separate diagnostic tools to do more than the sum of the parts. I hope this trend continues. My gut says we have a very, very long way to go from looking at it, to truly understanding how the brain works and if we are thinking of the brain as a Universe then this is a better telescope to start exploring it. The Hubble telescope is amazing, but we can’t use it to see the surface of Pluto for example, or if there is life on other planets (I wish we could peek at the surface Gliese 581g vs make guesses at orbits and sizes to infer what may be on the surface).
I am guessing we may someday soon have the option to add a chip to our brain and start outsourcing or expanding our memory so that we can access more data and increase the speed or types of data we can with our current brains. We use our computers and cellphones externally for this already, so faster interfaces like Google’s Glasses maybe be the next big thing toward bridging the gap. Once we can implant a chip to our eye to avoid the need of the external glasses, or a chip in our ear to avoid the need for a phone, or a chip in our brain to avoid the need to store data externally, then the next logical step is to connect our brains to unlimited resources of the cloud or record all of that info just to have a back up (like you have a back up of vacation photos or videos now). (or interface with new or non original feelings, sounds, tastes, experiences, etc)
But even if you could take a movie of your full life it is not a copy of your consciousness and thus where I still see a major gap. I guess I don’t see any problems in the future for them being able to make back ups of the brain signals that make you feel, see, hear, taste something so a back up would let you experience everything you used to just see in a video. But maybe just the word of “consciousness” is a distraction for me, or not the correct term you intended. If you asked could we map our memories and experiences…I would say YES. If you asked if we could make a full copy of our brain so that if we died we could just boot up again and use our back up and live forever..I would say NO. I think we will be able to upload our experiences, but not our soul and not the identity we think of as ourselves. Sure, i think we can someday make a very, very good look-alike robot or avatar that has our mannerisms and might follow a decision tree or chart almost identically to our real selves and fool any advanced truing test as being human or as being YOU, but if we died, we could never reboot as our true self through a transferred mind or uploaded consciousness. (if that was even what you were getting at?). I think many of us have wondered if we could one day make a clone of ourselves so that as our body grows old, maybe a transplant of our brain into the new body would let us live at least long enough to one day use other technology tricks or health improvements to live well for as long as we wished. The clone idea comes with it a full new set of “what-if’s” of course… I think we have all thought it would be cool to have a few extra copies, with one to do the hard work, then we could be free to do all the fun stuff {this movie shows more of the dark side if you figure out you were tricked into being one of the worker versions of the clone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(film) } so maybe you could trick the copy into thinking it was the
‘real one”….(maybe), but I don’t think you can trick YOU into believing….or worse, I don’t think you can back yourself up and then let the original die and then boot up the new one. Anything you can turn off and on like a computer…. for now at least that is where I draw a line in the sand. Yes you can backup or upload memories…just not souls or consciousness.
I think the purpose of making a back up of your brain is just like making a back up of your home movies, pictures, etc…so that YOU can use your brain for other things… or to make sure you don’t lose those memories and visit them anytime you want. I can understand others want to make a back up of their consciousness so they can live forever or if they died, they could reboot, or if they wanted to change bodies or live in an alternate reality like 2ndLife. I guess if you could make a full back up copy and turn it on and actually see through this 2nd person simultaneously and experience life and zip back and forth from 2 bodies knowing that YOU were still YOU, then I could rethink my position..(if you turn on the other YOU and don’t experience t. but I fear the moment the first person died, then all sense of self would be lost with the original and testing this experiment would likely kill you (the original). Even if the 2nd person said it was YOU…that would not be proof… only the real YOU could verify it.
by Bri
Much of what you say, reflects my own shortcomings on current views of mind uploading. It’s a hard sell, to tell people of my psychic experiences. For over thirty years I have probed them, to come to grips with them. It’s a lot like the movie The dead zone. King most definitely talked to people who have these experiences. The flash, the jump, the look on christophers face as it hits, is right on target. Not to mention the conviction of the character, or the way it changes your life. I identify strongly with those aspects. From my perspective, you can make an infinite number of copies of your self. It’s just that you, or should I say your soul, has to do it. It has to arise from your center. Tech could be developed that would draw it out of you, but if you make the vessel first, it would have it’s own emergent property, or soul. The back ups are useful, to get to that future tech. Then again, meditation is an external set of mind protocols, that could be evoked artificially. By this you could detach from your physical. Look at the monks who could sit in lotus positions , while thier bodies are on fire, for political reasons. Such an ability to separate from the recording device, that is the human brain. As you say, it is only reflections, all our memories. Mind uploading, as presented today, is a reflection of a reflection. If I experience a scene psychically of a space that doesn’t have anyone in it, which I have many times. My mind will record the memory, but my soul experienced the time and space, independent to my physical, or any physical presence. From experiences like these and over thirty years of trying to understand, I come to the conclusion that, our bodies are a vessel that we create to experience life. So it could be possible to create many others, even at the same time. Cell phones at the size of Red blood cells, could record the crucial synaptic states to recreate, what your able to remember. As a ba ck up this would be revolutionary. Consciousness and the soul are still a complete mystery to modern science. I don’t think they even acknowledge the existence of the soul. It truly is intangible. Almost like dark matter, but even worse. Absolutely nothing to do experiments on. It won’t show up on an MRI. All I know is that one of my earliest memories, is of being in a high chair. My mother was teaching me to drink from a cup. As I tried to drink, the fluid went down my air pipe and I choked, and gasped. I saw the whole scene from about where your heart is. My internal thoughts were…… I’m going to have to learn how to do this again!!!!!!! I was at best two years old. Probably closer to one and a half. Those thoughts and countless others have been there from the begining. How? Why? Where does that come from, in terms of our understanding of life? It’s not like someone else influenced me to think that way, certainly not my parents. I have always known that I have lived before. Period. I have almost always known why I am here. Period. Take comfort in the thought that we truly don’t die. I can’t conceive of what you people feel. I just have never felt what you do. If you make it through the singularity, great. If you don’t, your not that far away. Now those words should bake your noodle for awhile!!!!
by Jon
@Bri
I believe that you believe in your abilities, I just wish you could scientifically, indisputably prove them somehow.
If they were to be proven, and following that, heavily researched, I’m sure they could lead to major insights in the nature of existence and reality.
by Jon
@GatorALLin
Isn’t that why both the gradual uploading and synchronizing elements are so important? From what I’ve understood from Kurzweil’s preferred scenario; after a successful upload, you don’t have an online ‘backup’, your functioning would be largely online. Your physical body dying would not be a shut-down/reboot scenario, it’d be more like a monitor being turned off and replaced. Your continuity is at no point interrupted.
Even if an uploaded mind would create several bodies that go do several separate things, when they meet back for ‘deletion’ they could completely synchronize their minds again, not one of the bodies would experience death, and the final remaining (original) uploaded mind would just have several sets of memories of different experiences that happened at the same time, in different bodies.
by GatorALLin
layers of complexity…. 1+1 =3. Awesome!