SUPer-REsolution non-invasive Muscle measurements with miniaturised magnetIc SEnsors (SUPREMISE)

The assessment of muscle activity has become an essential indicator in medical diagnosis, motor rehabilitation, health monitoring, and neuroprosthetic/robotic control. Recent technological advances allow diseases that affect muscles and peripheral nerves to be recorded and diagnosed remotely and continuously. Motivated by exploring the electrophysiological behaviour of the uterus before childbirth, magnetomyography (MMG) was used for health monitoring during pregnancy. In addition, MMG can be used to rehabilitate, for example, traumatic nerve injuries, spinal cord lesions, and entrapment syndrome.

SUPREMISE is an ambitious, speculative, interdisciplinary, and creative fellowship programme of research that has the potential to address unmet clinical, leading to radically new technologies for muscle movement recording, creating a paradigm shift in neuromuscular patients and beyond e.g. human-machine interfacing for extended reality, gaming, and consumer electronics. The discoveries, research and new knowledge created within this fellowship will lead to a world-leading research group that will position the UK at the forefront of this emergent field. SUPREMISE will create the first wearable spintronic sensor for measuring MMG signals in the clinical setting.

SUPREMISE will involve radical innovations in magnetic sensors, microelectronics, wearable devices, muscle neuroscience, and signal processing. A principal aim is to make a transformative impact on the lives of patients affected by neuromuscular diseases by developing novel sensing diagnosis wearables based on spintronics that record and measure muscle activity. A paradigm-shifting engineering technology will be proposed by interfacing cutting-edge theoretical, computational, and experimental physics with advanced biomedical modelling and testing. While muscle activity which is linked to neuromuscular diseases, has captured the attention of the healthcare community, the magnetic recording approach to diagnosis has not been systematically applied through a robust and reliable tool. SUPREMISE will standardize the efficient utilization of the MMG sensor to detect such muscle activity for clinical deployment.

Miniaturizing magnetic sensing systems offer the prospect of replacing bulky laboratory instruments with easy-to-use wearable clinical platforms. It would decrease the cost (< £5), size, and noise floor by several orders of magnitude. Here, we propose a novel solution using nanofabricated spintronic TMR-based sensors integrated with the ASIC readout interface. This new wearable system with a small footprint, excellent sensitivity, ultralow noise, and excellent spatial resolution can detect low pico-Tesla (pT) magnetic fields generated by the muscle.

Given my published and peer-reviewed pilot research, I believe that we are at the stage where a combination of modelling and experimental work will accelerate progress. The project's results will target the development of a new miniaturized platform for muscle assays that refines the measurement of the MMG signals and streamlines techniques for use by clinicians.