The newly developed radioisotope-free technique based on magnetic nanoparticle detection using a magnetic probe is a promising method for sentinel lymph node biopsy. In this study, a novel handheld magnetic probe with a permanent magnet and magnetic sensor is developed to detect the sentinel lymph nodes in breast cancer patients. An outstanding feature of the probe is the precise positioning of the sensor at the magnetic null point of the magnet, leading to highly sensitive measurements unaffected by the strong ambient magnetic fields of the magnet. Numerical and experimental results show that the longitudinal detection length is approximately 10 mm, for 140 μg of iron. Clinical tests were performed, for the first time, using magnetic and blue dye tracers—without radioisotopes—in breast cancer patients to demonstrate the performance of the probe. The nodes were identified through transcutaneous and ex-vivo measurements, and the iron accumulation in the nodes was quantitatively revealed. These results show that the handheld magnetic probe is useful in sentinel lymph node biopsy and that magnetic techniques are widely being accepted as future standard methods in medical institutions lacking nuclear medicine facilities.

We developed a novel magnetometer that employs negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy (nV −) centers in diamond, to detect the magnetic field generated by magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) for biomedical applications. The compact probe system is integrated into a fiber-optics platform allowing for a compact design. To detect signals from the MNPs effectively, we demonstrated, for the first time, the application of an alternating current (AC) magnetic field generated by the excitation coil of several hundred microteslas for the magnetization of Mnps in diamond quantum sensing. in the lock-in detection system, the minimum detectable AC magnetic field (at a frequency of 1.025 kHz) was approximately 57.6 nT for one second measurement time. We were able to detect the micromolar concentration of Mnps at distances of a few millimeters. these results indicate that the magnetometer with the nV − centers can detect the tiny amounts of MNPs, thereby offering potential for future biomedical applications.

A centre-solenoid-free merging start-up scheme for spherical tokamak plasmas was developed in a University of Tokyo spherical tokamak (UTST) experiment by using outer poloidal field coils. Torus breakdown was initiated at null points and two spherical tokamak plasmas with a total current up to 80 kA were generated inductively. Their merging process provided substantial ion and electron heating by magnetic reconnection. The obtained dependence of heating on plasma current suggests that high-temperature and high-current plasma suitable for neutral beam injection is attainable under the realistic conditions in the merging start-up method.

Ejection of current sheet with plasma mass causes impulsive and intermittent magnetic reconnection in the TS-3 spherical tokamak (ST) merging experiment. Under high guide toroidal field, the sheet resistivity is almost classical due to the sheet thickness much longer than the ion gyroradius. Large inflow flux and low current-sheet resistivity result in flux and plasma pileup followed by rapid growth of the current sheet. When the pileup exceeds a critical limit, the sheet is ejected mechanically from the squeezed X-point area. The reconnection (outflow) speed is slow during the flux/plasma pileup and is fast during the ejection, suggesting that intermittent reconnection similar to the solar flare increases the averaged reconnection speed. These transient effects enable the merging tokamaks to have the fast reconnection as well as the high-power reconnection heating, even when their current-sheet resistivity is low under high guide field.

Magnetocardiography is a contactless imaging modality for electric current propagation in the cardiovascular system. Although conventional sensors provide sufficiently high sensitivity, their spatial resolution is limited to a centimetre-scale, which is inadequate for revealing the intra-cardiac electrodynamics such as rotational waves associated with ventricular arrhythmias. Here, we demonstrate invasive magnetocardiography of living rats at a millimetre-scale using a quantum sensor based on nitrogen-vacancy centres in diamond. The acquired magnetic images indicate that the cardiac signal source is well explained by vertically distributed current dipoles, pointing from the right atrium base via the Purkinje fibre bundle to the left ventricular apex. We also find that this observation is consistent with and complementary to an alternative picture of electric current density distribution calculated with a stream function method. Our technique will enable the study of the origin and progression of various cardiac arrhythmias, including flutter, fibrillation, and tachycardia.