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Magnetoencephalographic accuracy profiles for the detection of auditory pathway sources

  • Martin Bauer EMAIL logo , Lutz Trahms and Tilmann Sander
Published/Copyright: December 9, 2014

Abstract

The detection limits for cortical and brain stem sources associated with the auditory pathway are examined in order to analyse brain responses at the limits of the audible frequency range. The results obtained from this study are also relevant to other issues of auditory brain research. A complementary approach consisting of recordings of magnetoencephalographic (MEG) data and simulations of magnetic field distributions is presented in this work. A biomagnetic phantom consisting of a spherical volume filled with a saline solution and four current dipoles is built. The magnetic fields outside of the phantom generated by the current dipoles are then measured for a range of applied electric dipole moments with a planar multichannel SQUID magnetometer device and a helmet MEG gradiometer device. The inclusion of a magnetometer system is expected to be more sensitive to brain stem sources compared with a gradiometer system. The same electrical and geometrical configuration is simulated in a forward calculation. From both the measured and the simulated data, the dipole positions are estimated using an inverse calculation. Results are obtained for the reconstruction accuracy as a function of applied electric dipole moment and depth of the current dipole. We found that both systems can localize cortical and subcortical sources at physiological dipole strength even for brain stem sources. Further, we found that a planar magnetometer system is more suitable if the position of the brain source can be restricted in a limited region of the brain. If this is not the case, a helmet-shaped sensor system offers more accurate source estimation.


Corresponding author: Martin Bauer, Biosignals, Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), Abbestrasse 2-12, 10587 Berlin, Germany, Phone: +030 3481 7876, E-mail:

Acknowledgments

Financial support from the European metrology research programme (EMRP, programme Health, grant EARS), help in manufacturing the phantom by Dirk Gutkelch, as well as stimulating discussions with Christian Koch and the members of the HLT01 consortium and Jens Haueisen are gratefully acknowledged. The EMRP is jointly funded by the EMRP participating countries within EURAMET and the European Union.

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Received: 2013-12-13
Accepted: 2014-11-11
Published Online: 2014-12-9
Published in Print: 2015-4-1

©2015 by De Gruyter

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