Introduction

Despite recent advancements in research, major limitations are holding back clinical implementation of nose-to-brain magnetic particle delivery. These include physiological obstructions to particle transport, magnetic field strength attenuation as particles travel to deeper targets, and impracticality of manually operating magnet arrays in real-time. Weinberg Medical Physics LLC (MP) is constructing an MRI-guided, electropermanent magnetic control system (MCS) to address many of these issues.

Automation of MCS operation is key for effective implementation as manual manipulation of magnet arrays during surgeries is highly impractical. Project Magneto is a Bioengineering senior design project in collaboration with George Mason University (GMU) and Weinberg Medical Physics LLC (WMP)  from Fall 2018 – Spring 2019. Our control system serves as a software precursor to the MCS, laying the foundation for automation behavior, control flow, and user interaction. It will provide relevant, portable user-interface and back-end features for the MCS, as well as automate and improve the accuracy of magnetic object translation via WMP’s 4-coil system.

 

Project Magneto Path Drawing and Particle Manipulation Demo

 

High Level System Breakdown

Magneto can be broken into 4 overarching components:

  • Graphic User Interface (GUI) – This is the user’s main tool for system operation. The GUI implements and integrates all other components to perform particle delivery. Major functionalities include intuitive delivery path drawing, customized data collection, and system error detection.
  • Image Segmentation Module – This receives and processes optical images streamed via camera. It calibrates a consistent coordinate system and physical field-of-view regardless of the hardware orientation under the camera. It also performs detection of the magnetic object of interest through all streamed frames.
  • Physics Module (Particle Translation Model) – This determines electrical current values and their applied duration in order to translate the magnetic object along the delivery path. A translation command is generated from the model and sent to the motor controller hardware for execution.
  • Hardware Setup – This is the configuration and setup of the motor controller hardware needed to interface with WMP’s 4-coil magnet array system. The control scheme allows for communication from the GUI to the controllers and vice versa.