A Novel Field-Free Line Generator for Mechanically Scanned Magnetic Particle Imaging.

In this study, we propose an efficient field-free line (FFL) generator for mechanically driven FFL magnetic particle imaging (MPI) applications. The novel FFL generator comprises pairs of Halbach arrays and bar magnets. The proposed design generates high-gradient FFLs with low-mass permanent magnets, realizing fine spatial resolutions in MPI. We investigate the magnetic field generated using simulations and experiments. Our results show that the FFL generator yields a high gradient of 4.76 T/m at a cylindrical field of view of 30 mm diameter and a 70 mm open bore. A spatial resolution of less than 3.5 mm was obtained in the mechanically driven FFL-MPI.

MPI System with Bore Sizes of 75 mm and 100 mm Using Permanent Magnets and FMMD Technique.

We present two magnetic particle imaging (MPI) systems with bore sizes of 75 mm and 100 mm, respectively, using three-dimensionally arranged permanent magnets for excitation and frequency mixing magnetic detection (FMMD) coils for detection. A rotational and a translational stage were combined to move the field free line (FFL) and acquire the MPI signal, thereby enabling simultaneous overall translation and rotational movement. With this concept, the complex coil system used in many MPI systems, with its high energy consumption to generate the drive field, can be replaced. The characteristic signal of superparamagnetic iron oxide (SPIO) nanoparticles was generated via movement of the FFL and acquired using the FMMD coil. The positions of the stages and the occurrence of the f1 + 2f2 harmonics were mapped to reconstruct the spatial location of the SPIO. Image reconstruction was performed using Radon and inverse Radon transformations. As a result, the presented method based on mechanical movement of permanent magnets can be used to measure the MPI, even for samples as large as 100 mm. Our research could pave the way for further technological developments to make the equipment human size, which is one of the ultimate goals of MPI.

Sensing Range Extension for Short-Baseline Stereo Camera Using Monocular Depth Estimation.

This paper proposes a method to extend a sensing range of a short-baseline stereo camera (SBSC). The proposed method combines a stereo depth and a monocular depth estimated by a convolutional neural network-based monocular depth estimation (MDE). To combine a stereo depth and a monocular depth, the proposed method estimates a scale factor of a monocular depth using stereo depth-mono depth pairs and then combines the two depths. Another advantage of the proposed method is that the trained MDE model may be utilized for different environments without retraining. The performance of the proposed method is verified qualitatively and quantitatively using the directly collected and open datasets.