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Comparative Study
. 2025 May 15:312:121232.
doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2025.121232. Epub 2025 Apr 18.

A comparative study on the detection and localization of interictal epileptiform discharges in magnetoencephalography using optically pumped magnetometers versus superconducting quantum interference devices

Jiechuan Ren  1 , Ming Ding  2 , Yuming Peng  3 , Chang Sun  3 , Chunqing Yang  1 , Shuxian Zhou  1 , Jiayin Tian  1 , Qun Wang  4 , Zhimei Li  5
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Free article
Comparative Study

A comparative study on the detection and localization of interictal epileptiform discharges in magnetoencephalography using optically pumped magnetometers versus superconducting quantum interference devices

Jiechuan Ren et al. Neuroimage. .
Free article

Abstract

Background: Superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID)-based magnetoencephalography (MEG) holds substantial clinical value in epilepsy examination but is limited by the high costs. The optically pumped magnetometer (OPM)-based MEG appears promising in overcoming these limitations. This study aims to explore the consistency of interictal epileptiform discharge (IED) detection and source localization between OPM-MEG and SQUID-MEG in a large cohort of patients with epilepsy.

Methods: Patients with epilepsy underwent SQUID-MEG and 128-channel whole-scalp OPM-MEG examinations. IED detection, amplitude, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), sensor-scalp distance, and source localization results were compared between OPM-MEG and SQUID-MEG through statistical analysis.

Results: The cohort comprised 46 patients with epilepsy (mean age, 23.7 ± 8.7 [SD] years; 29 male). McNemar χ2 test indicated no significant difference for IED detection between two systems. OPM-MEG achieved a detection accuracy of 91.3 % compared with SQUID-MEG; a Gwet's first-order agreement coefficient (AC1) of 0.892 suggested good consistency. Among 39 patients with IEDs detected by both systems, OPM-MEG demonstrated closer sensor-scalp distance (p < 0.001), higher IED amplitude (p < 0.001) and SNR (p = 0.003) compared with SQUID-MEG. At the sublobar level, OPM-MEG and SQUID-MEG exhibited nearly consistent source localization results. Among 24 patients with single dipole clusters, the average centroid distance between dipole clusters of OPM-MEG and SQUID-MEG was 12.16 ± 5.90 mm.

Conclusion: This real-world study demonstrated that OPM-MEG had comparable applicability in IED detection and source localization, compared with SQUID-MEG. Additionally, OPM-MEG performed better in terms of IED amplitude and SNR. Lower costs and user-friendly features highlight the clinical potential of OPM-MEG in epilepsy assessments.

Keywords: Epilepsy; Interictal epileptiform discharge; MEG; OPM; SQUID.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Ming Ding reports a relationship with Beijing X-Magtech Technology Limited that includes: board membership. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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