RTD-fluxgate sensor for measurements of metal compounds in neurodegenerative diseases

Abstract

It has been observed that patients with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer, Parkinson and Huntington's disorders, accumulate metals in their nervous system. In this context several techniques have been exploited in order to measure brain iron levels in some neurodegenerative diseases, such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and measurement systems based on magnetic sensors (i.e. HTS or LTS SQUID magnetometers). In particular, the measurement approach based on MRI, unlike PET, does not require use of radioactive tracers and has superior spatial resolution. However many radiology centers do not perform MRI analysis on patients with implanted devices considering that potential hazards (such as motion, dislocation or torquing of the implanted medical system, heating of the leads, and its damage) may occur. In this paper, the possibility to adopt the Flexible RTD-Fluxgate magnetometer as alternative low cost solution, as respect other proposed architectures (including SQUID sensors) to perform measurements of metal compounds in neurodegenerative diseases is investigated. Experimental results are shown that encourage to pursue this approach in order to obtain simple devices that can detect several quantities of known ferromagnetic compounds accumulated on to a localized area such to be useful for diagnosis purposes.