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Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Jens Haueisen
Director of the BMTI Institute and head of Biomedical Engineering Group
Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Jens Haueisen
phone: +49 3677 69 2861
Source reconstruction is a widely used method to estimate the location, orientation, and strength of bioelectrical sources from surface potential measurements or from magnetic field measurements. It is extensively used in the localization of neuronal activity in the brain, but it is also used to localize electrophysiological activity in the heart and in other biomedical research areas. Source reconstruction comprises the computation of bioelectric and biomagnetic fields due to given sources (the forward problem) and the source parameter estimation based on given measurements (the inverse problem).
Inverse bioelectric and biomagnetic problems are computationally complex and don’t have unique solutions. Consequently, validation should be an inherent part of development and application of data analysis procedures. Validation approaches in general include simulations, phantom measurements, in vitro and in vivo measurements.
Physical phantom measurements provide a unique means to assess to performance of source localization techniques. Unlike simulations, they take into account the real world influences, such as for example environmental noise or 3D positioning errors, thus giving an error estimate of the entire source reconstruction procedure. Unlike in vivo measurements, no physiological uncertainties exist and the ground truth in terms of source position, strength, orientation, and extent is known.