• 순환기질환의공학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2006.10a
• /
• pp.38-39
• /
• 2006

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.34 no.2
• /
• pp.153-160
• /
• 2010

A magnetocardiogram (MCG) is a recording of the biomagnetic signals generated by cardiac electrical activity. Biomagnetic instruments are based on superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs). A liquid cryogenic Dewar flask was used to maintain the superconductors in a superconducting state at a very low temperature (4 K). In this study, the temperature distribution characteristics of the liquid helium in the Dewar flask was investigated. The Dewar flask used in this study has a 30 L liquid helium capacity with a hold time of 5 d. The Dewar flask has two thermal shields rated at 150 and 40 K. The temperatures measured at the end of the thermal shield and calculated from the computer model were compared. This study attempted to minimize the heat transfer rate of the cryogenic Dewar flask using an optimization method about the geometric variable to find the characteristics for the design geometric variables in terms of the stress distribution of the Dewar flask. For thermal and optimization analysis of the structure, the finite element method code ANSYS 10 was used. The computer model used for the cryogenic Dewar flask was useful to predict the temperature distribution for the area less affected by the thermal radiation.

• 한국컴퓨터산업교육학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2003.11a
• /
• pp.59-64
• /
• 2003

Principal component analysis(PCA) and neural network(NN) are used in reducing external noise in magnetocadiography. The PCA technique turns out to be very effective in reducing pulse noise in some SQUID channels and the NN find noise component automatically. Some experimental results obtained from 61 channel MCG system are shown.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
• /
• 2003.11a
• /
• pp.549-552
• /
• 2003

The electrical current generated by heart creates not only electric potential but also a magnetic field. We have observed electrophysiological phenomena of the heart by measuring tangential components of magnetocardiogram(MCG) using 61 channel superconducting quantum interference device(SQUD) system. In this paper, we developed a new analysis method, which is based on the theory of electromagnetic field. We show some differences of the current direction between the normal MCG and the abnormal(ischemic heart disease) MCG.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
• /
• 2003.07c
• /
• pp.2749-2752
• /
• 2003

Magnetocardiography is a very weak biomagnetic field generated from the heart. Since the magnitude of the biomagnetic field is in the order of a few pico Tesla, it is measured with a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID). SQUID is a transducer converting magnetic flux to voltage, however, its range of linear conversion is very restricted. In order to overcome the narrow dynamic range. a flux locked loop is used to feedback the output field with opposite polarity to the input field so that the total Held becomes zero. This prevents the operating point of the SQUID from moving too far away from the null point thereby escape from the linear region. In this paper, an emulator for the SQUID sensor and feedback coil is proposed. Magnetic courting between the original field and the generated field by the feedback coil is emulated by electronic circuits. By using the emulator, FLL circuits are analyzed and optimized without SQUID sensors. The emulator may be used as a test signal for multi-channel gain calibration and system maintenance.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
• /
• 2004.11c
• /
• pp.538-540
• /
• 2004

Electrical currents generated by human heart activities create magnetic fields represented by MCG(MagnetoCardioGram). Since an MCG signal acquisition system requires precise and stable operation, the system adopts hundreds of SQUID(Superconducting QUantum Interface Device) sensors for signal acquisition. Such a system requires fast real-time data acquisition in a required sampling interval, i.e., 1 mili-second for each sensor. This paper presents designed hardware to acquire data from 256-channel analog signal with 1 ksamples/sec speed, using 12-bit 8-channel ADC devices, SPI interfaces, parallel interfaces, 8-bit microprocessors, and a DSP processor. We implemented SPI interface between ADCs and a microprocessor, parallel interfaces between microprocessors. Our result concludes that the data collection can be done in $168{\mu}sec$ time-interval for 256 SQUID sensors, which can be interpreted to 6 ksamples/sec speed.

• Progress in Superconductivity
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.124-128
• /
• 2011

We have developed a high-$T_C$ SQUID magnetometer system to measure magnetocardiograms of laboratory rats. White noise of the measurement system was about 50 fT/$Hz^{1/2}$ when measured in a magnetically shielded box. We optimized the measurement position to obtain clear MCG wave from rat's small heart by using grid measurements. With the optimization, the MCG signal was successfully detected with the peak amplitude of about 50 pT. We could observe well defined P-, QRS-, and T-wave from the rat MCG. The results suggest that the developed system has a strong potential to monitor the progress of heart disease model using laboratory rat.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2004.07b
• /
• pp.902-905
• /
• 2004

A heart diagnosis system adopts Superconducting Quantum Interface Device(SQUID) sensors for precision MCG signal acquisitions. Such system is composed of hundreds of sensors, requiring fast signal sampling and precise analog-digital conversions(ADC). Our development of hardware board, processing 64-channel 12-bit 1ks/s, is built by using 8-channel ADC chips, 8-bit microprocessors, SPI interfaces, and parallel data transfers between microprocessors to meet the 1ks/s, i.e. 1 ms speed. The test result shows that the signal acquisition is done in 168 usuc which is much shorter than the required 1 ms period. This hardware will be extended to 256 channel data acquisition to be used for the diagnosis system.

• Progress in Superconductivity
• /
• v.11 no.2
• /
• pp.147-151
• /
• 2010

We have developed a high-$T_c$ SQUID magnetocardiogram (MCG) system for small laboratory animals. White noise of the measurement system was about 30 fT/$Hz^{1/2}$ when measured in a magnetically shielded room. We optimized the measurement position to obtain clear MCG wave from rat's small heart by using grid measurements. With the optimization, the MCG signal was successfully detected with the peak amplitude of about 30 pT. We could observe well defined P-, QRS-, and T-waves from the rat MCG. The results suggest that the developed system has a strong potential to monitor the progress of the heart disease model by using a laboratory rat.

• Progress in Superconductivity
• /
• v.4 no.1
• /
• pp.48-52
• /
• 2002

When applying a SQUID system for diagnosing heart disease, it is informative to obtain the source current distributions from the measured MCG (magnetocardiogram) signals since the bioelectric activity in the heart is generally represented by distributed current sources. In order to estimate the Primary current distribution in a heart, the minimum norm estimate was computed, assuming a source plane below the chest surface. In the simulation, current distributions, which were computed for the test dipoles represented well the essential feature of the test-current configurations. Source current reconstruction was performed for MCG signal of a healthy volunteer, which was recorded using a 40-channel SQUID system in a magnetically shielded room. It was found that the obtained current distribution is consistent with the electrical activity in a heart.