• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• 제23권4호
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• pp.135-145
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• 2006

Objectives and Methods : Using the 2-channel DROS SQUID (Korea Research Institute of Standards of Science, 1999), the present study was carried out to record changes elicited in the auditory cortex by acupuncture stimulus on right TE5 (Waiguan) and GB43 (Xiaxi). Needle-retention stimulation of TE5 and GB43 were done for acquiring the brain activities changed by acupuncture. Acupoint TE5 and GB43 is known to be effective for the treatment of ear-related disease, such as deafness and tinnitus, and to be suspected to be related to the auditory cortex. Auditory evoked magnetic fields were recorded hem the left hemisphere of five subjects, in response to contralateral ear stimulation by irregularly spaced 170 msec long 1kHz tone busts (Korea Research Institute of Standards of Science) Results and Conclusions : The result as follows. The latency and amplitude of SQUID MEG responses at the human auditory cortex changed by needle-retention condition on TE5 were 4msec and 9.2 fT, respectively, which were slower and smaller than those of no-acupuncture condition. The latency and amplitude of SQUID MEG responses at the human auditory cortex changed by needle-retention condition on GB43 were 7.2 msec and 1.6 fT, respectively, which were slower and larger than those of no-acupuncture condition. The latency of SQUID MEG responses at the human auditory cortex changed by needle-retention condition on GB43 condition was slower than that of TE5 acupuncture condition.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• 제11권1호
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• pp.78-82
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• 2009

We have fabricated a helmet type magnetoencephalogrphy(MEG) with a $1^{st}$ order gradiometer in vacuum to improve the signal-to-noise ratio(SNR) and the boil-off rate of liquid helium(LHe). The axial type first-order gradiometer was fabricated with a double relaxation oscillation SQUID(DROS) sensor which was directly connected with a pickup coil. The neck space of LHe dewar was made to be smaller than that of a conventional dewar, but the LHe boil-off ratio appeared to increase. To reduce the temperature of low Tc SQUID sensor and pickup coil to 9 K, a metal shield made of, such as copper, brass or aluminum, have been usually used for thermal transmission. But the metal shield exhibited high thermal noise and eddy current fluctuation. We quantified the thermal noise and the eddy current fluctuation of metal. In this experiment, we used the bobbin which was made of an alumina to wind Nb superconductive wire for pickup coil and the average noise of coil-in-vacuum type MEG system was $3.5fT/Hz^{1/2}$. Finally, we measured the auditory evoked signal to prove the reliability of coil-in-vacuum type MEG system.

• 한국초전도학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국초전도학회 2009년도 Korea Superconductivity Society Meeting 2009
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• pp.71-71
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• 2009

• 한국초전도학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국초전도학회 2002년도 High Temperature Superconductivity Vol.XII
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• pp.10-10
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• 2002

• 대한임상검사과학회지
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• 제37권2호
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• pp.123-128
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• 2005

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is the measurement of the magnetic fields produced by electrical activity in the brain, usually conducted externally, using extremely sensitive devices such as Superconducting Quantum Interference Device (SQUID). MEG needs complex and expensive measurement settings. Because the magnetic signals emitted by the brain are on the order of a few femtoteslas (1 fT = 10-15T), shielding from external magnetic signals, including the Earth's magnetic field, is necessary. An appropriate magnetically shielded room is very expensive, and constitutes the bulk of the expense of an MEG system. MEG is a relatively new technique that promises good spatial resolution and extremely high temporal resolution, thus complementing other brain activity measurement techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), positron emission tomography (PET), single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). MEG combines functional information from magnetic field recordings with structural information from MRI. The clinical uses of MEG are in detecting and localizing epileptic form spiking activity in patients with epilepsy, and in localizing eloquent cortex for surgical planning in patients with brain tumors. Magnetoencephalography may be used alone or together with electroencephalography, for the measurement of spontaneous or evoked activity, and for research or clinical purposes.

• 동의생리병리학회지
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• 제19권4호
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• pp.1032-1038
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• 2005

Using the 2-channel DROS SQUID (Korea Research Institute of Standards of Science, 1999), the present study was carried out to record changes elicited in the auditory cortex by acupuncture stimulus (right GB43, Xiaxi). Needle-retention and manual needle-twitching stimulation of GB43 and SP1 were done for acquiring the brain activities changed by acupuncture. Acupoint GB43 is known to be effective for the treatment of ear-related disease, such as deafness and tinnitus, and to be suspected to be related to the auditory cortex. Auditory evoked magnetic fields were recorded from the left hemisphere of five or four subjects, in response to contralateral ear stimulation by irregularly spaced 170msec long 1kHz tone busts (Korea Research Institute of Standards of Science). The result as follows The latency and amplitude of SQUID MEG responses at the human auditory cortex changed by needle-retention condition on GB43 were 7.2msec and 1.617, respectively, which were slower and larger than those of no-acupuncture condition. The amplitude of SQUID MEG responses at the human auditory cortex changed by needle-twitching condition on GB43 was 13.517, which was larger than that of no-acupuncture condition. The change in SP1 following GB43 needle-twitching condition were not observed in latency. The amplitude changed by needle-twitching condition on SP1 was 12.2fT, which was not significant. These results suggested that auditory cortex can be affected by acupuncture stimulus, though not specific or significant because of small number of subjects.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.19-26
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• 2002

We have earlier developed a 40-channel SQUID system. An important figure of merit of a MEG system is the localization error, within which the underlying current source can be localized. With this system, we investigated the localization error in terms of the standard deviation of the coordinates of the ECDs and the systematic error due to inadequate modeling. To do this, we made localization of single current dipoles from tangential components of auditory evoked fields. Equivalent current dipoles (ECD) at N1m peak were estimated based on a locally fitted spherical conductor model. In addition, we made skull phantom and simulation measurements to investigate the contribution of various errors to the localization error. It was found that the background noise was the main source of the errors that could explain the observed standard deviation. Further, the amount of systematic error, when modeling the head with a spherical conductor, was much less than the standard deviation due to the background noise. We also demonstrated the performance of the system by measuring the evoked fields to grammatical violation in sentence comprehension.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• 제3권2호
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• pp.151-158
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• 2002

We developed a useful SQUID magnetometer for biomagnetic applications, magnetoencepha-logram(MEG) and magnetocardiogram(MCG), etc. The SQUIDs are based on Double Relaxation Oscillation SQUID(DROS). DROS consists of two SQUIDs(signal SQUID and reference SQUID) in series, and a relaxation circuit of an inductor and a resistor. Specially we used single reference junction instead of the reference SQUID. The SQUIDs are based on hysteretic $Nb/AlO_{x}$Nb junctions, fabricated by using a simple four level process. Because DROS magnetometer has large flux-to-voltage transfer coefficient, we can use simple flux-locked loop electronics fur SQUID operation. When the DROS magnetometer was operated inside a magnetically shielded room, its average magnetic field noise was about 3 (equation omitted) at 100 Hz. This noise level is low enough to measure biomagnetic fields. In this paper, we describe noise characteristics of DROS magnetometer, depending on the operation condition . .

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제24권3호
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• pp.159-165
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• 2003

뇌자도 측정을 위해 고감도 superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) 자력계 및 37채널 뇌자도 측정장치를 제작하고 동작특성을 조사하였다. 자속-전압 변환계수 및 변조전압 진폭이 큰 double relaxation oscillation SQUID (DROS)를 사용함으로서 구동회로를 간단히 하였고 안정한 SQUID 동작을 실현할 수 있었다. DROS 자력계를 설계 및 제작한 결과 자력계의 평균 백색잡음은 약 3 fT/√Hz으로서 우수한 자장감도를 가짐을 확인하였다 머리의 평균곡률을 기반으로 37개의 자력계를 반구형으로 배치시켰으며, 외부잡음을 줄이기 위해 신호채널 외에 11개의 기준채널을 설치하여 소프트웨어 방법으로 합성미분계 및 적응필터링을 형성할 수 있도록 하였다 저잡음 듀아를 제작하여 동작특성을 측정한 결과 듀아 열자기 잡음이 자력계 잡음에 비해 무시할 수 있는 수준이었으며, 듀아의 용량은 30 L, 액체헬륨 증발율은 4 L/d이다. 제작된 시스템을 이용하여 청각유발 신호를 측정하고, 디지털 신호처리 및 전류원 국지화 프로그램을 구성하여 전류원의 위치를 추정함으로서 개발된 시스템을 뇌자도 측정에 활용하였다.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.42-47
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• 2002

Measuring magnetic fields with a SQUID sensor always requires preliminary adjustments such as optimum bas current determination and flux-locking point search. A conventional magnetoencephalography (MEG) system consists of several dozens of sensors and we should condition each sensor one by one for an experiment. This timeconsuming job is not only cumbersome but also impractical for the common use in hospital. We had developed a serial port communication protocol between SQUID sensor controllers and a personal computer in order to control the sensors. However, theserial-bus-based control is too slow for adjusting all the sensors with a sufficient accuracy in a reasonable time. In this work, we introduce programmatic control sequence that saves the number of the control pulse arrays. The sequence separates into two stages. The first stage is a function for searching flux-locking points of the sensors and the other stage is for determining the optimum bias current that operates a sensor in a minimum noise level Generally, the optimum bias current for a SQUID sensor depends on the manufactured structure, so that it will not easily change about. Therefore, we can reduce the time for the optimum bias current determination by using the saved values that have been measured once by the second stage sequence. Applying the first stage sequence to a practical use, it has taken about 2-3 minutes to perform the flux-locking for our 37-channel SQUID magnetometer system.