Transformation of whole head magnetoencephalographic data onto standardized sensor position

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project focus on developing a new method for scientists to analyze the magnetic fields generated by the activities of the brain.  Multiple subjects or patients data are combined and analyzed to obtain generalizable findings for the clinical and basic science studies.  The outputs of the sensors that detected the magnetic fields are related to the subject head position relative to the sensor array.  Thus, combining data based on the sensor positions is not justifiable due to anatomical difference between individual brains. Current approach requires estimating the neuronal sources that generate the fields for each individual prior to combining them.  Two problems associated with this approach: First, lengthy measurement is needed to improve the signal quality for source estimation. Second, the estimated source distribution is technique dependent.  The results may differ substantially between source estimation techniques.  The proposed method avoids the problems by transforming the magnetic field signals for a set of standard sensor array, which allows signals from the same sensor combining directly.  With this new approach scientists able to analyze the magnetic field data from multiple subjects without first estimating the neuronal sources.  This provides new opportunities for the scientists to investigate some clinical and basic science problems that are currently not possible.