Transformation of whole head magnetoencephalographic data onto standardized sensor position

这个项目的重点是为科学家开发一种新方法来分析大脑活动产生的磁场。将多个受试者或患者的数据进行组合和分析，以获得临床和基础科学研究的可推广的结果。检测磁场的传感器的输出与相对于传感器阵列的受试者头部位置相关。因此，由于个体大脑的解剖差异，基于传感器位置合并数据是不合理的。目前的方法需要先估计每个个体产生磁场的神经元来源，然后再将它们组合起来。与此方法相关的两个问题：首先，需要长时间的测量来提高源估计的信号质量。其次，估计的源分布依赖于技术。不同的源估计技术的结果可能有很大的不同。该方法通过对一组标准传感器阵列的磁场信号进行变换，使来自同一传感器的信号可以直接组合，从而避免了上述问题。有了这种新方法，科学家们可以在不首先估计神经元来源的情况下分析来自多个受试者的磁场数据。这为科学家们研究一些目前不可能解决的临床和基础科学问题提供了新的机会。

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.