Quantum magnetometers enter a clinical imaging trial
Room-temperature sensors let magnetoencephalography move with the patient instead of the other way around.
By Ruth Okonjo
Written in-house by the Field report desk — an explainer, not a report of a news event.
- Wearable sensor arrays replace fixed cryogenic helmets.
- First trial focuses on paediatric epilepsy mapping.
- Ambient magnetic shielding remains the cost driver.
Quantum sensing is the part of the field already producing instruments people use. Optically pumped magnetometers work at room temperature, which means magnetoencephalography no longer requires a patient to sit perfectly still inside a cryogenic helmet.
The first trial targets paediatric epilepsy mapping, where patient movement has always limited data quality.
Shielding the ambient magnetic environment remains the dominant cost, and it is a building problem more than a physics one.
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