EEG and MRI

Dr Richard Jones from the Van der Veer Institute for Parkinson’s & Brain Research talks about a new EEG they have that is non-metallic and can be used in an MRI machine.

Lottery grant funding has meant the Van der Veer Institute has been able to obtain a new EEG made without any metallic parts. The metallic electrodes have been replaced with ceramic ones, which are safe to use in an MRI machine. This is allowing researchers to carry out exciting new research using measurements taken simultaneously from the EEG and the MRI.

Transcript

DR RICHARD JONES We bought this system here using Lotteries health funding, and these particular electrodes are special in that they’re not metallic. And metallic things, once they go into the MR scanner, cause interference on the scans themselves, and they actually heat up due to the magnetic fields so they can get a bit hot. So we need special technology in the MR scanner for these particular signals.

This allows us to be able to measure the EEG in the MR scanner, which most EEG machines can't do. So we can measure the two simultaneously. We get the EEG, we get the functional MRI, so we’re getting these multiple pictures of the brain at the same time, and it’s putting them together which gives us the great power of investigation.