Transformation of whole head magnetoencephalographic data onto standardized sensor position

该项目的重点是为科学家开发一种新的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合并和分析，以获得临床和基础科学研究的可推广结果。 检测磁场的传感器的输出与受试者头部相对于传感器阵列的位置相关。 因此，由于个体大脑之间的解剖学差异，基于传感器位置组合数据是不合理的。目前的方法需要估计神经源，产生的领域，为每个人之前，将它们组合起来。 与这种方法相关的两个问题：第一，需要长时间的测量来改善源估计的信号质量。其次，估计的源分布是技术依赖的。 源估计技术之间的结果可能有很大不同。 该方法通过对一组标准传感器阵列的磁场信号进行变换，使得来自同一传感器的信号直接合成，从而避免了上述问题。 通过这种新方法，科学家能够分析来自多个受试者的磁场数据，而无需首先估计神经源。 这为科学家们提供了新的机会来研究一些目前不可能的临床和基础科学问题。

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.