A miniature magnetic sensor using a tiny cloud of atoms has successfully tracked a human heartbeat for the first time.
In a new study, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the German national metrology institute tried out the sensors – which until now have been operated mostly in physics laboratories – in a near-clinical setting.
The new experiments were carried out at the Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) in Berlin, Germany, in a building described as having the world's best magnetic shielding – necessary to block the Earth's magnetic field and other external sources from interfering with the high-precision measurements.
