Xi Hao, Lu Meng-Chien, Qian Xiaoshi, Zhang Q M, Rupprecht Sebastian, Yang Qing X
Department of Electrical Engineering and Material Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802 USA.
Departments of Radiology and Neurology, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA 17033 USA.
Proc IEEE Sens. 2016 Oct-Nov;2016. doi: 10.1109/ICSENS.2016.7808778. Epub 2017 Jan 9.
Ultrasensitive magnetoelectric (ME) sensors have been developed using magnetostrictive/piezoelectric laminate heterostructures. This paper discusses a highly interdisciplinary design of a room temperature biomagnetic liver susceptometry system (BLS) based on the ME sensors. The ME-sensor based BLS maintains the ultrahigh sensitivity to detect the weak AC biomagnetic signals and introduces a low equivalent magnetic noise. The results reveal a "turning point" and successfully indicate the output signals to be linearly responsive to iron concentrations from normal iron level (0.05 mg/g) to 5 mg/g iron overload level (100X overdose). Further, the introduction of the water-bag technique shows the promise on the automatic deduction of the background (tissue) signal, enabling an even higher sensitivity and better signal-to-noise (SNR). With these improvements, it becomes feasible to get improved characterization flexibility and the field distribution mapping potential via signal processing from the correlations of multiple sensors in the system. Considering the wide presence of biomagnetic signals in human organs, the potential impact of such biomagnetic devices on medicine and health care could be enormous and far-reaching.
利用磁致伸缩/压电层状异质结构开发了超灵敏磁电（ME）传感器。本文讨论了基于ME传感器的室温生物磁肝磁测量系统（BLS）的高度跨学科设计。基于ME传感器的BLS保持了检测微弱交流生物磁信号的超高灵敏度，并引入了低等效磁噪声。结果揭示了一个“转折点”，并成功表明输出信号对铁浓度从正常铁水平（0.05 mg/g）到5 mg/g铁过载水平（过量100倍）呈线性响应。此外，水袋技术的引入显示了自动扣除背景（组织）信号的前景，从而实现了更高的灵敏度和更好的信噪比（SNR）。有了这些改进，通过系统中多个传感器相关性的信号处理来提高表征灵活性和场分布映射潜力变得可行。考虑到生物磁信号在人体器官中的广泛存在，这种生物磁装置对医学和医疗保健的潜在影响可能是巨大而深远的。
