Development and Evaluation of the Simple Answering Device Using under High Magnetic Field

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a tomographical scanning system that has a strong magnetic field. In the MRI room, ferric materials and noisy electric circuits cannot be present or function. At an experiment that investigates a human brain function using the fMRI (functional MRI), such as the phase discrimination of temporal frequency between visual and auditory, it is difficult to measure the answering times and its time quantitatively. At this point of view, we have developed a new simple answering device. This device is made of the mouse that is popular at office. For the strong magnetic field, its circuit is removed except the clicking part. As it can be connected to a personal computer, we can measure the answering times and its time during the experiment using the fMRI. To do so, there are some problems to solve, such as the strong magnetic field. In this paper, the performance of the answering device is demonstrated by several basic experiments to solve these problems.