News
Neuroscience Campus lab acquires new MEG
Prof. Cees Stam in charge of replacing old MEG system by a new Elekta Neuromag System.
Note: Visit the Symposium MEG at the VUmc on the 31st of May. Download the program brochure here.
MEG at the VU University Medical Center has a long and rich history. MEG in Amsterdam started as an institute of the Royal Dutch Academy of Science (KNAW), and was made possible by the initiative of Henk Spekreijse and a collaboration between the KNAW, the VUmc, the AMC and the UMCU. Since these pioneering days, a lot has changed. The MEG has gradually been incorporated into the organization of the VUmc, and has become an integral part of the department of Clinical Neurophysiology since 2004. Clinical work has focused on preoperative evaluation of epilepsy surgery patients, and by now more than half of all patients operated upon in the Netherlands undergo a pre-operative MEG as part of the workup.
Current research focuses on the four main patient groups of the department of neurology and the Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam: Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, Parkinson’s disease, neuro-oncological patients and Multiple Sclerosis. In these various disorders, alterations in large-scale functional brain networks have been studied in relation to early diagnosis and cognitive dysfunction. More recently, the MEG center has pioneered the use of graph theory in such studies, which has been expanded to vari-ous other disorders such as survivors of childhood leukaemia, diabetes, obesitas and epilepsy. Studies in large cohorts of healthy subjects (AGGO) and twins have also been conducted, as well as fundamental studies of movement in healthy subjects in collaboration with the faculty of Human Movement Sciences at the VU. The number of MEG sessions per year has increased to more than 500 in 2009. The focus on clinical studies in large patient cohorts, and the use of complex network analysis, have become trademarks of the VUmc approach to MEG.
The board of directors of the VUmc has supported the replacement of our old system by a new Elekta Neuromag system, which was installed on December 5 th 2009. With a magnificent new MEG system and a completely renovated MEG suite, which provides a state of the art patient environment, we can now face the future of clinical MEG. On May 31 we will organize a symposium to celebrate the start of a new era of MEG, and to provide an overview of past and present MEG work at the VUmc.
