Description
Increasing awareness of the long-term risks posed to athletes who continue competing following a concussion has motivated a recent drive for reliable pitch-side diagnoses. One promising candidate is magnetoencephalography (MEG), the study of magnetic fields generated by electrical activity in the brain. These fields, of sub-picotesla magnitude and Hz-100Hz frequencies, can be examined by placing precision magnetometers close to the scalp. Existing MEG studies have reported measurable differences between the detected brain activity in concussed individuals, as compared to healthy controls¹.
However, MEG is yet to be applied to a pitch-side diagnosis context. This is largely due to the bulky equipment requirements of the magnetometers used, making them impractical for transport. These include fridges for cryogenic operation of SQUIDs and magnetically-shielded rooms to prevent saturation of optically-pumped atomic vapour magnetometers (OPMs).
Optomechanical magnetometers present a viable alternative. They can be operated at room temperature and require little to no magnetic shielding. By observing the changing length of an optical cavity or beam deflection from a reflective cantilever, each coupled to a magnetostrictive material, one can read out the oscillating magnetic field that the material is exposed to².
In this poster, I will outline some examples of magnetometers that we have designed based on these principles, as well as recent progress towards applying them for MEG. By exploring multiple designs and a variety of magnetostrictive materials, we have achieved sub-picotesla sensitivities to signals in the kHz regime. We have also demonstrated successful nonlinear mix-up of signals at low, biologically-relevant frequencies to permit their detection using our sensors³. In parallel, we are using OPMs in a compact magnetically-shielded environment to develop our concussion diagnosis protocols.
- I. Mavroudis et al., Brain Sciences 15 2 (2025).
- F. Gotardo et al., Opt. Express 31 (2023).
- B. Carey et al., arXiv: 2603.23944 (2026).
| I am the presenting author | Yes |
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