Aston University’s Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment has been granted £800,000 from the Medical Research Council towards specialist magnetoencephalography equipment.
The joint research team with Birmingham Children’s Hospital (BCH) will use the kit to improve outcomes for children with brain damage, or after brain surgery.
Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a brain imaging technology which measures small magnetic fields in the brain caused by electrical activity. This allows researchers to map brain activity, and is useful for investigating brain function and other clinical applications.
However conventional MEG scanners are fixed in place and require little to no head movement in an enclosed space, which can be unpleasant or difficult for children.
Convenient and comfortable
The scanner purchased by the Aston University’s Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment (IHN) is an optically pumped magnetometer (OPM) MEG scanner, which uses an adjustable cap placed on the patient’s head, making it more convenient and comfortable for children by allowing some amount of movement.
The facility will be staffed and used jointly by the Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment (IHN) and BCH’s neurophysiology department.
IHN and BCH have a research programme in place for the scanner, which is focused on improving outcomes for children with a wide range of brain disorders including traumatic brain injury.
This will build on their existing work using MEG to help neurosurgeons plan brain surgery for children with epilepsy and brain tumours and to understand what factors can determine better outcomes in these conditions. This can in future help rehabilitation specialists to carefully target their treatments.
Currently, MEG scanners are operated by specially trained technicians. However, the teams at Aston University and Birmingham Children’s Hospital will work with MAG4Health to develop the clinical practices and software that will allow data analysis to take place in hospitals, rather than it being limited to universities.
'Multidisciplinary and multiprofessional collaboration'
Peter Bill, lead healthcare scientist from BCH, said: “This represents a fantastic opportunity to grow and develop our clinical workforce and to deliver a unique service for our patients and their families.
“This is building on a foundation of advancing practice in the healthcare sciences that has seen Aston University and our profession develop a successful MSc programme over a decade ago. I see this as an exciting example of how multidisciplinary and multiprofessional collaboration can improve patient care through innovation.”
The clinical research team, led by Dr Caroline Witton, was awarded the grant from the Medical Research Council’s Capital Funding for World Class Labs scheme, and has been supplemented by Aston University.
'Chance to make a real difference'
Dr Witton said: “I am incredibly excited about the opportunities we have been given with this funding. OPM-MEG is the next frontier in our field, and I genuinely think that, because of our unique partnership with BCH, we have the chance to make a real difference to how MEG is used clinically.”
The total funding of £2.5 million will be used to purchase the MEG scanner from French company MAG4Health, and construct a magnetically shielded laboratory to house it.
The facility is expected to open in 2025.
(Image: MEG scanner cap)