A joint research team led by Professor Masaki Sekino of the University of Tokyo and Professor Mutsuko Hatano of Tokyo Institute of Technology has developed a quantum sensor based on nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond and succeeded in visualizing rat cardiac magnetism with microscopic spatial resolution on the millimeter (mm) scale. Conventionally, SQUIDs and other devices have been used for cardiac magnetic imaging, but they have been limited to the cm scale. The new technique is expected to be an important tool for developing research on various cardiac diseases, as it can be used to elucidate arrhythmias that occur in minute areas on the millimeter scale. These results were published in the online edition of “Communications Physics” on August 23.
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