Open Source Electromagnetic Trackers

Key Personnel

• Retired: Peter Traneus Anderson
• NA-MIC: Tina Kapur, Sonia Pujol

Goals of the Project

To teach the process of developing electromagnetic trackers for research, to foster an open community of researchers developing electromagnetic trackers, to develop open-source software and open-source hardware for working research electromagnetic trackers interfacing to Slicer through OpenIGTLink.

Current Progress

Project started at 2011 Summer Project Week

6DOF Electromagnetic Tracker Construction HOWTO

[Photos] of hand-built first 6DOF prototype

References

• http://home.comcast.net/~traneus

• 2011 Summer Project Week

• Frederick H. Raab, "Quasi-Static Magnetic-Field Technique for Determining Position and Orientation", IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. GE-19, No. 4, October 1981, pages 235-243. Direct solution for 6DOF tracker.

• C.A. Nafis, V. Jensen, L. Beauregard, P.T. Anderson, "Method for estimating dynamic EM tracking accuracy of Surgical Navigation tools", SPIE Medical Imaging Proceedings, 2006. Reports low-cost accuracy-measuring techniques and results for various trackers.

• C. L. Dolph, "A current distribution for broadside arrays which optimizes the relationship between beam width and sidelobe level," Proc. IRE, Vol. 35, pp. 335-348, June, 1946. The original Dolph-Chebyshev Fourier-transform window article. Dolph-Chebyshev window can give 140 dB rejection in the stopband.

• Albert H. Nuttall, "Some Windows with Very Good Sidelobe Behavior". IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing 29 (1) 84-91, doi:10.1109/TASSP.1981.1163506, "U.S. Government work not subject to U.S. copyright", in particular Figure 10 window for -L/2 < t < L/2:

w(t) = (1/L) (10/32 + 15/32 cos(2pi t/L) + 6/32 cos(4pi t/L) + 1/32 cos(6pi t/L))

has first sidelobe at -61 dB and 42 dB/octave sidelobe rolloff.

• Eugene Paperno, "Suppression of magnetic noise in the fundamental-mode orthogonal fluxgate", Elsevier, Sensors and Actuators A 116 (2004) 405-409. Picotesla noise in 20 mm long 1 mm diameter fluxgate magnetometer.