Non-rigid-registration-based positioning and labelling of triaxial OPMs on a flexible cap for wearable magnetoencephalography

Background: Recent advances in highly sensitive miniaturized optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs) have enabled the development of wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) offering great flexibility in experimental setting. The OPM array for wearable MEG is typically attached to a flexible cap and exhibits a variable spatial layout across different subjects, which imposes challenges concerning the efficient positioning and labelling of OPMs.New method: A pair of reflective markers are affixed to each triaxial OPM sensor above its cable to determine its location and sensitive axes. A non-rigid registration of optically digitized marker locations with a pre-labelled template of marker locations is performed to map newly digitized markers to OPMs.Results: The positioning and labelling of 66 OPM sensors could be completed within 35 s. Across ten experiments, all OPMs were accurately labelled, and the mean test-retest errors were 0.48 mm for sensor locations and 0.20 degree for sensitive axes. By combining six OPMs' positions with their respective recordings, magnetic dipoles inside a phantom were located with a mean error of 5.5 mm, and the best fitted dipole for MEG with auditory stimuli presented was located on a subject's primary auditory cortex. Comparison with existing methods: The proposed method reduces the reliance on error-prone and laborious manual operations inherent in existing methods, therefore significantly improving the efficiency of OPM positioning and labelling on a flexible cap.Conclusion: We developed a method for the precise and rapid positioning and labelling triaxial OPMs on a flexible cap, thereby facilitating the practical implementation of wearable OPM-MEG.

Automated summary

We developed a precise and rapid method for positioning and labelling triaxial OPMs on a wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) system, improving the efficiency of OPM positioning and labelling.