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Made in this inexpensive way, the low-power sensors could be set into portable, battery-powered imaging arrays. Such arrays could easily map out the strength and extent of magnetic fields; the more sensors in an array, the more information it can provide about an object's location and shape. Soldiers, for example, could use such arrays to find unexploded bombs and improvised explosive devices more quickly and cheaply.
The tiny sensors could also revolutionize MRI and NMR. Both technologies rely on powerful, cumbersome, expensive magnets that require costly cooling systems. Because Kitching's sensors can detect very weak magnetic fields, MRI and NMR machines incorporating them might be able to get good pictures using a magnet that's much weaker--and therefore smaller and cheaper.
As a result, MRI could become more widely available. And for the first time, doctors could use it to examine patients with pacemakers or other metallic implants that can't be exposed to powerful magnets. Portable systems might even be developed for use in ambulances or on battlefields. And NMR could move from the lab into the field, where it could help oil and mining companies assess promising underground deposits.
Kitching and his colleagues recently showed that the sensors can measure NMR signals produced by water. Much remains to be done, Kitching says, before the devices can resolve faint signals from multiple chemical structures--distinguishing, say, between several possible trace contaminants in a water sample. Likewise, portable MRI machines will take some work. But with Kitching's miniaturized magnetometers, the challenge will shift from gathering magnetic information to interpreting it.
Nobel Prize winner Dan Shechtman discusses the potential uses for quasicrystals.
A startup has developed a device that uses magnetic particles to identify pathogens rapidly.
Device maps the chemistry of the whole brain in moving animals.
I'm far more interested in the potential for increased resolution of MRI using these sensors with the huge superconducting magnets of current medical MRI machines. If the resolution can be increased to the level of individual synaptic dimensions, then a complete structural snapshot of a working brain might be possible.
That would be very exciting! Unfortunately, it's likely that this type of magnetometer won't provide resolution below a few 100 microns, because of some size limitations, it'll be tough to bring it close to a sample.
There are some really neat magnetometers up and coming though that might be able to provide nm resolution for MRI, check out the NV magnetometer. Still hasn't been shown to get resolution of 1nm which is what you would need to image synapses, but still pretty cool.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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enantiomer2000
66 Comments
BCI anybody?
Could this be used as a brain machine interface at some point in the future? Current non-implantable ones just sense the electrical conductivity on the surface of the scalp, but this could allow for a much more robust brain computer interface. It would be very useful for anybody who wants to integrate their mind with their computers.
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Lord Skelos
10 Comments
Re: BCI anybody?
I'm with you all the way on that idea, but chech this out: if we were to make nanobots or nervous system implants that used this technology, we could: 1. Give the human body a new magnetic sense that could allows for new levels of communication and understanding, or 2. Equip nanobots with the ability to scan our body constantly as they flow through our bodies, and destroy any malevolent lifeforms or toxins they find on a much wider scale. Using this as the primary sense for nanobots would also allow them to be a billion times more useful than they are with just touch.
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