Designing multichannel neuromagnetometers

Abstract

The use of lead field analysis to design pick-up coils and arrays of coils which are optimized to approximate arbitrary spatial filtering characteristics is described. The limitations of these filters by ambient magnetic field and sensor noise is discussed. It is concluded that the design of individually tailored pick-up coils and arrays of pick-up coils for multichannel magnetometers can be significantly enhanced by computing the lead fields for the coils. In particular, the characteristics of the current noise sources and desired spatial filtering properties can be incorporated into the location and design of individual elements in the array.