A €2 million wearable brain scanner capable of picking up the earliest signs of epilepsy, dementia and ADHD has arrived at Trinity College Dublin.
The magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanner – which resembles a cycling helmet punctuated with microchips – is better than MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, because users do not have to stay motionless as it works.
It is superior too to the EEG (electroencephalography) scans used to detect electrical signals from the brain, because, unlike EEG, the magnetic fields MEG scanners pick up are not impeded by the skull.
Prof Redmond O’Connell, director of the new MEG system, described it as “the most important breakthrough in human brain imaging in the last two decades”.
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“The new OPM-MEG system here in Trinity will provide scientists with unique information about the timing and location of brain activity,” he said.
The UK-based company behind the technology, Cerca Magnetics, spun out of research at Nottingham University in 2020.
The TCD system allows voluntary participants to be seated comfortably in a chair as experiments take place, or to move around freely in ways that are more typical of our daily lives.
It is the second MEG system in Ireland, said Prof O’Connell, with the first located at Ulster University (UU) in Derry.
The TCD system is less expensive, he said, because unlike the UU machine it doesn’t need cryogenic temperatures of -150 centigrade or lower to operate.
The MEG is housed in a specially constructed, copper-lined room in the basement of the Lloyd Building on the main campus of TCD.
“It’s like a bank vault, or a submarine,” said Prof O’Connell, as he described the facility’s thick shielding and advanced sensors.
“This is a room within a room, designed to eliminate all background magnetic fields so we can pick up the tiny signals coming from the brain.”
The MEG’s sensors – known as optically pumped magnetometers – rely on advanced quantum technology to measure brain activity.
“There’s a vapour cell inside each sensor,” said Dr O’Connell. “When you shine light through the gas, it aligns the atoms’ spins. Any magnetic field from the brain disturbs that alignment and the senor picks it up.
“We can now get both the ‘where’ and ‘when’ of brain activity – something that’s been impossible with previous technologies like MRI and EEG.”
In future, MEG can enable scientists to locate precisely the regions of the brain affected by epilepsy, and remove the need for invasive surgery to apply sensors directly on to the brain, as happens today.
There are many ways MEG technology could be applied clinically, said Prof O’Connell, but it’s most immediately significant for people with epilepsy.
“With epilepsy, you’re looking for very fast spikes in brain activity,” said Dr O’Connell. “MRI can’t pick them up and EEG often requires invasive electrodes placed directly on the brain.
“MEG could allow us to locate the source of epilepsy non-invasively, which would be a huge advance for patients.”
