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Talks and presentations
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This page collects talks, posters and presentations given by the NeuroWaves MEG
Laboratory and the Bio-Medical Imaging Core at NYU Abu Dhabi.
SAMBA × MEG 2026 - Conference Poster
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**Benchmarking SQUID and OPM Magnetoencephalography with a Dry Phantom:
Source Localization Accuracy and Its Dependence on Sensor Count**
:Authors: Hadi Zaatiti :sup:`1`, Daisuke Oyama :sup:`2`, Yoshiaki Adachi :sup:`2`
:Affiliations: :sup:`1` Bio-Medical Imaging Core & NeuroWaves MEG Laboratory, New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE · :sup:`2` Applied Electronics Laboratory, Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Japan
:Presenting author: hz3752@nyu.edu
.. admonition:: Conference details
| **Conference:** SAMBA × MEG - Salzburg Mind Brain Annual meeting × MEG
| **Venue:** University of Salzburg, Austria
| **Dates:** 2-3 July 2026
| **Format:** Poster presentation (A0 portrait)
Abstract
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Magnetoencephalography (MEG) noninvasively records the magnetic fields of
neuronal activity using either established cryogenic SQUID sensors or emerging
optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs), which need no cooling and can sit closer
to the scalp. Human comparisons are confounded by physiology, so we benchmarked
both technologies on a **dry phantom** emulating 50 equivalent current dipoles
(ECDs), measured by both a SQUID (Kanazawa Institute of Technology) and an OPM
system (HEDscan) in the same shielded room at NYU Abu Dhabi. Drive currents of
10 and 100 µA varied signal-to-noise ratio; sources were reconstructed with the
Sarvas formula and scored against CT-calibrated ECD positions. Placing OPMs
closer to the source gave a peak signal 3-4× larger than SQUID (6.6 vs 2.2 pT),
yet OPM localization error was about three times larger: 3.48 ± 0.58 mm versus
1.07 ± 0.17 mm at 10 µA, and 2.77 versus 0.74 mm at 100 µA. Controlled analyses
showed this gap was not explained by signal-to-noise ratio, channel count, or
spatial coverage; a 90-channel SQUID subset still reached 1.56 mm, and only
~40 SQUID channels were needed to match the 90-channel OPM accuracy (3.13 mm),
implicating **OPM sensor-array calibration** as the dominant factor. A dry
phantom thus offers a reproducible, physiology-free benchmark for
cross-technology comparison.
**Keywords:** magnetoencephalography; SQUID; optically pumped magnetometers;
dry phantom; source localization; sensor array scalability
Poster (PDF)
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The poster is written in `Typst `_; the compiled A0 PDF is
committed alongside the source in this repository.
.. admonition:: Download the poster
:download:`SAMBA × MEG 2026 poster (A0 PDF) `
Source files (Typst source, figures, and the reusable NYUAD poster template) live
in the repository under
``docs/source/7-meg-class-talks-demos/talks/samba-meg-2026-poster/`` and
``docs/source/_templates/typst/``.
Reference
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Oyama, D.; Zaatiti, H. *Phantom-Based Approach for Comparing Conventional and
Optically Pumped Magnetometer Magnetoencephalography Systems.* Sensors **2025**,
25(7), 2063. https://doi.org/10.3390/s25072063