A simulation study of the resolving power of the biomagnetic inverse procedure

In order to get a rough idea of the resolving power of the biomagnetic inverse procedure, simulation studies with a time-dependent two-dipole model have been carried out. Holding the locations and the directions of the dipoles constant (fixed-dipole approach), the inverse problem was solved simultaneously for all sampling times within a 300 ms window. The spatial resolution was found to be highly dependent on the angle between the dipole moments and the properties of the superimposed noise. The results suggest that, in practice, the spatial resolution of the fixed-dipole approach will be of the order of 1 cm at best.