Wearable neuroimaging: Combining and contrasting magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography
Open accessAbstract
One of the most severe limitations of functional neuroimaging techniques, such as magnetoencephalography (MEG), is that participants must maintain a fixed head position during data acquisition. This imposes restrictions on the characteristics of the experimental cohorts that can be scanned and the experimental questions that can be addressed. For these reasons, the use of 'wearable' neuroimaging, in which participants can move freely during scanning, is attractive. The most successful example of wearable neuroimaging is electroencephalography (EEG), which employs lightweight and flexible instrumentation that makes it useable in almost any experimental setting. However, EEG has major technical limitations compared to MEG, and therefore the development of wearable MEG, or hybrid MEG/EEG systems, is a compelling prospect. In this paper, we combine and compare EEG and MEG measurements, the latter made using a new generation of optically-pumped magnetometers (OPMs). We show that these new second generation commercial OPMs, can be mounted on the scalp in an 'EEG-like' cap, enabling the acquisition of high fidelity electrophysiological measurements. We show that these sensors can be used in conjunction with conventional EEG electrodes, offering the potential for the development of hybrid MEG/EEG systems. We compare concurrently measured signals, showing that, whilst both modalities offer high quality data in stationary subjects, OPM-MEG measurements are less sensitive to artefacts produced when subjects move. Finally, we show using simulations that OPM-MEG offers a fundamentally better spatial specificity than EEG. The demonstrated technology holds the potential to revolutionise the utility of functional brain imaging, exploiting the flexibility of wearable systems to facilitate hitherto impractical experimental paradigms.
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MEG has lower sensitivity to non-neuronal artefacts than EEG.
“and lower sensitivity to non-neuronal artefacts [17].”
From Naturalistic Hyperscanning with Wearable Magnetoencephalography (2023) · cites this paper as [17]
The Discussion reports that MEG is less susceptible to muscle artefacts than EEG, and that OPM-MEG recordings degraded less during head movement. Those passages support the comparison for muscle- and movement-related artefacts, but do not establish lower sensitivity to non-neuronal artefacts generally or for all forms of MEG. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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Moving magnetoencephalography towards real-world applications with a wearable system
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“With scalpmounting, the sensing volume is positioned only millimetres from the scalp surface and the measured magnetic field is consequently higher compared to superconducting sensors (which are located further away), providing increased sensitivity (Boto et al., 2017, 2016; Iivanainen et al., 2017).”
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
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Self-citationA tool for functional brain imaging with lifespan compliance
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Naturalistic Hyperscanning with Wearable Magnetoencephalography
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“, the difference between playing the game and resting) we also expected that, following each strike of the ball, a small amplitude increase in beta power should occur [17]; ssuming consistent timings, we exp cted this ffect should alternate between participants (e.”
BackgroundInfluentialSelf-citationNugent, A. C., Benitez Andonegui, A., Holroyd, T., & Robinson, S. E. (2022) · Neuroimage: Reports · doi:10.1016/j.ynirp.2022.100093 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
- Authors
- Boto, E., Seedat, Z. A., Holmes, N., Leggett, J., Hill, R. M., Roberts, G., Shah, V., Fromhold, T. M., Mullinger, K. J., Tierney, T. M., Barnes, G. R., Bowtell, R., & Brookes, M. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Nottingham (GB)
- QuSpin (United States) (US)
- Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Boto, Elena
- ORCID
- Venue
- NeuroImage
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2019-11
- Volume
- 201
- Pages
- 116099
- ISSN
- 1053-8119 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8235152
- OpenAlex
- W2967267902
- Cited by
- 136
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 25 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 2
- FWCI
- 6.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- Locations
- NeuroImage (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Repository@Nottingham (University of Nottingham) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- Repository@Nottingham (University of Nottingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/M013294/1)
- Medical Research Council (EP/L016052/1)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications
- Keywords
- wearable neuroimaging, magnetoencephalography, EEG, optically pumped magnetometers, spatial specificity
- MeSH terms
- Wearable Electronic Devices, Adult, Electroencephalography, Equipment Design, Female, Humans, Male, Magnetoencephalography, Neuroimaging
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