Boys Town, Nebraska - system upgrade

April 2024

The Cerca team returned to Boys Town Institute for Human Neuroscience in Omaha, Nebraska, to integrate an additional 40 OPMs to their cMEG system, previously installed in January 2023. The result was a whopping 104-sensor, 208-channelsystem - Cerca’s largest and most ambitious project to date. This required both hardware and software updates, plenty of CAD designs, and a cabinet reshuffle (the server rack kind).

The extension to their cMEG system will allow researchers at Boys Town to expand their work in developmental neuroscience to study infants and small children, enabled by the lightweight and wearable nature of the Cerca OPM-MEG system.

Holly explains the significance of the extension: "Both simulation and experiment show that increasing the number of channels in a MEG array improves sensitivity and coverage of the system. The highest current channel count of an OPM-MEG array is 192-channels (64 tri-axial sensors), compared to ~300 channels in cryogenic systems. Pushing the channel count of OPM systems further could lead to unprecedented spatial resolution and SNR, allowing us to localise brain signals with mm accuracy and measure weaker and deeper sources.

February saw two significant steps towards this for Cerca. The largest commercial array that Cerca has built, with 104 dual-axis sensors (208-channels), was tested on-site, and subsequently shipped out to the US, where it will be used for higher density scanning as well as magnetomyography. The second step saw the building of the world’s first 384-channel OPM-MEG system (larger than any MEG system in the world) through collaborative research from the University of Nottingham, QuSpin Inc. and Cerca. Preliminary measurements are currently being taken with the system at the University of Nottingham."

Boots on the ground included Tyler Hayward, Ashley Tyler, Molly Rea and Holly Schofield. Whilst in Nebraska, the team also managed to fit in a visit to Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo, a road trip up the Lewis & Clark byway, and saw their first baseball game - Go Bluejays!
‍