• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.57-61
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• 2010

We have developed a whole-head MEG system for basic brain research and clinical application. The sensor system consists of a 152 SQUID gradiometer array oriented and located in a suitable way to cover a whole head of the human. The system measures magnetic fields generated by neuronal currents in the brain to get information on the brain activities. For this purpose, the field sensitivity determined by the position, orientation and geometry of the pickup coil as well as amplification factor of the electronic circuits should be known precisely. However, the position and orientation of the pickup coil might be changed from the designed specifications during cool down of the dewar and it is necessary to characterize the field sensitivity. In this study, we made calibration systems to determine the actual position and orientation of the 152 pickup coils and compared the localization results of the N100m source in the auditory cortex.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.44-48
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• 2014

A liquid nitrogen-cooled prepolarization ($B_p$) coil made for ultra-low field nuclear magnetic resonance and magnetic resonance imaging (ULF-MR) designed to generate 7 mT/A was fabricated. However, with suspected internal insulation failure, the coil was investigated in order to find out the source of the failure. This paper reports detailed build of the failed $B_p$ coil and a number of analysis methods utilized to figure out the source and the mode of failure. The analysis revealed that pyrolytic graphite sheet linings put on either sides of the coil for better thermal conduction acted as an electrical bridge between inner and outer layers of the coil to short out the coil whenever a moderately high voltage was applied across the coil. A simple model circuit simulation corroborated the analysis and further revealed that the failed insulation acted effectively as a damping resistor of $R_{d,eff}=6{\Omega}$ across the coil. This damping resistance produced a 50 ms-long voltage tail after the coil current was ramped down, making the coil not suitable for use in ULF-MR, which requires complete removal of magnetic field from $B_p$ coil within milliseconds.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.258-264
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• 1997

$YBa_{2}Cu_{3}O_{7}$ single layer dc SQUID magnetometers, prepared on $1\;cm^{2}\;SrTiO_{3}$ substrates, have been fabricated and characterized. Based on the analytical description, a SQUID magnetometer design having a 8.5 mm pickup coil with 2.6 mm linewidth, and a SQUID inductance Ls = 50 pH with $3\;{\mu}m$ Josephson junctions is presented. The devices showed a maximum modulation voltage depth of $65\;{\mu}V$ and a magnetic field noise of 0.6 pT /$\sqrt{Hz}$ at 1 Hz. Clear traces of human magnetocardiogram could be obtained with the SQUID magnetometer operating at 77 K.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.41-45
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• 2010

Low temperature micro-calorimeters have been employed in the field of high resolution alpha spectrometers. These alpha detectors typically consist of a superconducting or metal absorber and a temperature sensor. The temperature sensor can be a transition edge sensor (TES), a metallic magnetic calorimeter (MMC) or other low temperature detectors for an accurate measurement of temperature change due to an alpha particle absorption. We report a recent study of the heat flow between a replaceable absorber and a temperature sensor. A piece of gold foil in $2.4{\times}2.7{\times}0.03\;mm^3$ is used as an absorber. A $40\;{\mu}m$ diameter Au:Er paramagnetic sensor is attached to another small piece of gold foil in $400{\times}200{\times}30\;{\mu}m^3$ to serve as the temperature sensor. This sensor assembly, Au:Er and gold foil, is placed on a miniature SQUID susceptometer in a gradiometric configuration. The thermal connection between the absorber and the sensor was made with three gold bonding wires. The measured thermal conductance shows a linear dependence to the temperature. The values are in a good agreement with Wiedemann-Franz type thermal conductance of the gold wires.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.56-63
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• 2004

We consider design factors for a SQUID sensor array to construct a 52-channel magnetocardiogram (MCG) system that can be used to measure tangential components of the cardiac magnetic fields. Nowadays, full-size multichannel MCG systems, which cover the whole signal area of a heart, are developed to improve the clinical analysis with high accuracy and to provide patients with comfort in the course of measurement. To design the full-size MCG system, we have to make a compromise between cost and performance. The cost is involved with the number of sensors, the number of the electronics, the size of a cooling dewar, the consumption of refrigerants for maintenance, and etc. The performance is the capability of covering the whole heart volume at once and of localizing current sources with a small error. In this study, we design the cost-effective arrangement of sensors for MCG by considering an adequate sensor interval and the confidence region of a tolerable localization error, which covers the heart. In order to fit the detector array on the cylindrical dewar economically, we removed the detectors that were located at the corners of the array square. Through simulations using the confidence region method, we verified that our design of the detector array was good enough to obtain whole information from the heart at a time. A result of the simulation also suggested that tangential-component MCG measurement could localize deeper current dipoles than normal-component MCG measurement with the same confidence volume; therefore, we conclude that measurement of the tangential component is more suitable to an MCG system than measurement of the normal component.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.28-35
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• 2005

We propose a method to measure atrial arrhythmias (AA) such as atrial fibrillation (Afb) and atrial flutter (Afl) with a SQUID magnetocardiograph (MCG) system. To detect AA is one of challenging topics in MCG. As the AA generally have irregular rhythm and atrio-ventricular conduction, the MCG signal cannot be improved by QRS averaging; therefore a SQUID MCG system having a high SNR is required to measure informative atrial excitation with a single scan. In the case of Afb, diminished f waves are much smaller than normal P waves because the sources are usually located on the posterior wall of the heart. In this study, we utilize an MCG system measuring tangential field components, which is known to be more sensitive to a deeper current source. The average noise spectral density of the whole system in a magnetic shielded room was $10\;fT/{\surd}Hz(a)\;1\;Hz\;and\;5\;fT/{\surd}Hz\;(a)\;100\;Hz$. We measured the MCG signals of patients with chronic Afb and Afl. Before the AA measurement, the comparison between the measurements in supine and prone positions for P waves has been conducted and the experiment gave a result that the supine position is more suitable to measure the atrial excitation. Therefore, the AA was measured in subject's supine position. Clinical potential of AA measurement in MCG is to find an aspect of a reentry circuit and to localize the abnormal stimulation noninvasively. To give useful information about the abnormal excitation, we have developed a method, separative synthetic aperture magnetometry (sSAM). The basic idea of sSAM is to visualize current source distribution corresponding to the atrial excitation, which are separated from the ventricular excitation and the Gaussian sensor noises. By using sSAM, we localized the source of an Afl successfully.