Error bounds in MEG (Magnetoencephalography) multipole localization
- Karim
- John C.
- Sylvain
- Richard M.
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a non-invasive method that enables the measurement of the magnetic field produced by neural current sources within the human brain. Unfortunately, MEG source estimation is a severely ill-posed inverse problem. The two major approaches used to tackle this problem are 'imaging' and 'model-based' methods. The first class of methods relies on a tessellation of the cortex, assigning an elemental current source to each area element and solving the linear inverse problem. Accurate tessellations lead to a highly underdetermined problem, and regularized linear methods lead to very smooth current distributions. An alternative approach widely used is a parametric representation of the neural source. Such model-based methods include the classic equivalent current dipole (ECD) and its multiple current dipole extension [1]. The definition of such models has been based on the assumption that the underlying sources are focal and small in number. An alternative approach reviewed in [4], [5] is to extend the parametric source representations within the model-based framework to allow for distributed sources. The multipolar expansion of the magnetic field about the centroid of a distributed source readily offers an elegant parametric model, which collapses to a dipole model in the limiting case and includes higher order terms in the case of a spatially extended source. While multipolar expansions have been applied to magnetocardiography (MCG) source modeling [2], their use in MEG has been restricted to simplified models [7]. The physiological interpretation of these higher-order components in non-intuitive, therefore limiting their application in this community (cf. [8]). In this study we investigate both the applicability of dipolar and multipolar models to cortical patches, and the accuracy with which we can locate these sources. We use a combination of Monte Carlo analyses and Cramer-Rao lower bounds (CRLBs), paralleling the work in [3] for the ECD. Results are presented for both point sources and cortical patches.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE
- OSTI ID:
- 975132
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-01-0643; LA-UR-01-643
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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