There have been great strides made in the past year or so in our ability to diagnose diseases more quickly and efficiently than is currently the case. Most of these revolve around the use of machine learning to consume vast quantities of data and develop the ability to identify patterns that humans miss.
That isn’t the only approach being pursued however, as a recent study illustrates. The paper describes a variant on the traditional method of monitoring the electric fields that pulse throughout the body as charges move through nerves and across muscles. We have long used this as a means of detecting heart and brain issues, but this process also produces magnetic fields, and the authors believe that measuring this can be equally useful. Indeed, because magnetic sensors don’t need skin contact to work, they could be more practical than existing methods, and help us to measure for issues in burns victims, for instance.
Whilst such an approach undoubtedly has merit, traditionally it has been incredibly expensive, with a magnetocardiograph system costing roughly 500 times that of an electrocardiograph.
Improving affordability
The researchers, from the University of Warwick, believe that sensors made of diamonds may be able to make performing magnetocardiographs more cost effective, not least because they can be used at room temperature and don’t require hospitals to build expensive rooms to house them.
It’s a fascinating approach. There are currently around 100 magnetocardiograph systems in operation around the world, but there are over 100,000 hospitals that could potentially use such a system.
“We estimate that 100,000 magnetocardiograph systems could be sold if the functionality were the same as existing SQUID systems and the price was below $150k,” the authors say.
Because of the high cost of SQUID systems, our magnetic field is a domain that is largely unused in terms of medical diagnostics, but with innovations like this one, that may be set to change.