Impact of Superconducting Devices on Imaging in Neuroscience

This paper provides an overview on the basic principle and applications of magnetoencephalography, which requires the use of many SQUID channels and thus represents one of the more important application of superconducting electronic devices. This paper is divided into 8 sections. Section 1 is an overview of the MEG technique. Section 2 provides a short historical background on the method. Section 3 explains how the magnetic fields measured by MEG are generated and which are the mathematical models for such sources. Section 4 rapidly explains which are the requirements of a MEG system. Section 5 presents and discusses the new trend in superconducting instrumentation for imaging, that is the Ultra Low Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance/ Magnetic Resonance Imaging (ULF NMR/MRI); of note, this technique can be integrated with MEG to improve overall usefulness of magnetoencephalography. Section 6 provides some examples of standard MEG measurements and discusses MEG integration with fMRI. Section 7 presents some recent results on new applications of MEG, increasing the value of this method. Section 8 is a critical summary of the method state of the art and its perspectives.