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A joint team from the Russian Quantum Center, Skoltech, and the Higher School of Economics has presented a novel supersensitive solid-state magnetometer operating at room temperature. The researchers for the first time used it to detect and record brain electrical activity with a technique called magnetoencephalography, which could become dozens of times cheaper with the new device. The paper was published in Human Brain Mapping.

High accuracy is a key advantage of magnetoencephalography (MEG) over other similar techniques used for studying the electrical activity of the brain. Biological tissues are transparent for magnetic fields. However, only a very limited number of laboratories around the world have MEG equipment, which uses either extremely cold liquid helium or high-temperature gas and is very expensive and difficult to manufacture.

A team from the Russian Quantum Center (RQC) developed a new sensor using yttrium-iron garnet films. This is the first solid-state supersensitive room-temperature magnetometer in the world. It is based on a quantum sensor and is capable of registering very weak or deep electrical sources in the brain. Owing to its wide dynamic range, the device requires less magnetic shielding, which means a lower cost of both the hardware and the entire research infrastructure. [Read more…] about Russian researchers present ultra-precise brain imaging tool