A New Generation of OPM for High Dynamic and Large Bandwidth MEG: The 4He OPMs-First Applications in Healthy Volunteers

MagnetoEncephaloGraphy (MEG) provides a measure of electrical activity in the brain at a millisecond time scale. From these signals, one can non-invasively derive the dynamics of brain activity. Conventional MEG systems (SQUID-MEG) use very low temperatures to achieve the necessary sensitivity. This leads to severe experimental and economical limitations. A new generation of MEG sensors is emerging: the optically pumped magnetometers (OPM). In OPM, an atomic gas enclosed in a glass cell is traversed by a laser beam whose modulation depends on the local magnetic field. MAG(4)Health is developing OPMs using Helium gas (He-4-OPM). They operate at room temperature with a large dynamic range and a large frequency bandwidth and output natively a 3D vectorial measure of the magnetic field. In this study, five He-4-OPMs were compared to a classical SQUID-MEG system in a group of 18 volunteers to evaluate their experimental performances. Considering that the He-4-OPMs operate at real room temperature and can be placed directly on the head, our assumption was that He-4-OPMs would provide a reliable recording of physiological magnetic brain activity. Indeed, the results showed that the He-4-OPMs showed very similar results to the classical SQUID-MEG system by taking advantage of a shorter distance to the brain, despite having a lower sensitivity.

Automated summary

MagnetoEncephaloGraphy (MEG) measures electrical activity in the brain at a millisecond time scale. The conventional system uses low temperatures but the emerging OPM technology allows for measurements at room temperature with a larger dynamic range and frequency bandwidth. The study compared five He-4-OPMs to a classical SQUID-MEG system and found that despite lower sensitivity, the He-4-OPMs provided similar results due to their close proximity to the brain.