Group Facilities

Over the past 24 years,
Professor Wikswo and his group members have established a research environment well-equipped for theoretical and experimental studies of the weak electric and magnetic fields produced by biological and non-biological systems.

Laboratory: The Living State Physics Laboratories occupy a total of 8,500 ft2 on the first and eighth floors of the Physics Building, immediately adjacent to the Department of Biomedical Engineering. The 2,500 ft2 of eighth floor space allocated to Professor Wikswo includes a conference room, a machine shop, a climate-controlled computer room, a drafting shop, a darkroom, an electronics shop, a dissection room, two electromagnetically shielded rooms, two animal rooms, and eleven offices. The space on the first floor houses the 3,800 ft2 Electromagnetics Laboratory, which includes three large work rooms, three offices, an electrophysiology suite for laser imaging, and four rooms for SQUID magnetometer measurements.

The research building of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center is immediately adjacent to the Physics Building and the rest of the Stevenson Center for the Natural Sciences and Engineering, which was located next to the Medical School to foster collaborative research. Thus the laboratories of collaborating investigators are within a two-minute walk of the Living State Physics Laboratories.

Animal Facilities: The eighth-floor laboratories include a room designed for animal preparation and surgery. The facilities of the Surgical Sciences Section of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center are available for sterile surgery. The Animal Care Facility provides housing and care of all warm-blooded animals used in our research. Both of these facilities are across the street from the Physics Building, and can also be reached by means of underground tunnels connecting the Stevenson Center and the Medical Center.

SQUID Facility: The group operates ten custom-built SQUID instruments, including two high resolution SQUID microscopes that define the state-of-the-art in sensitivity for room temperature samples, an imaging magnetic susceptometer, an axial-field SQUID eddy current system, a six-channel vector SQUID gradiometer, and a three-axis SQUID system dedicated to imaging corrosion currents in aluminum. Two new low-noise, high resolution SQUID systems were delivered 1998. A 29-channel clinical SQUID system for magnetoenterography was delivered in mid-2000. The corrosion and MicroSQUID systems are equipped with a magnetic shield and automated scanning system that allows around-the-clock measurements, and a third such system is under construction.

In addition to a number of small magnetic shields, the facility has a Vacuumschmelze 15 ft × 12 ft × 9 ft magnetically shielded room that is used for studies of biomagnetic signals from humans and for other measurements requiring a low field environment. The room has two mumetal layers and one of aluminum, and reduces the geomagnetic field within the shield to less than 0.15 T. The 60 Hz magnetic field within the room is less than 0.5 nT. The room is equipped with DC lighting, and two overhead gantries for positioning SQUID magnetometers above a patient.

Instrumentation: The Living State Physics Laboratory has several well-equipped experimental electrophysiological stations with Faraday shields for in vitro measurements on isolated, cardiac, nerve, and muscle tissue preparations. The laboratory has an extensive collection electrophysiological, cryogenic, and general purpose test instruments, including a state-of-the-art system for panoramic laser-fluorescence imaging of cardiac action potentials in isolated hearts. The laboratory has many Labview-based data acquisition systems with extensive electronic instrumentation and digital oscilloscopes, including computerized scanning stages, and innumerable personal computers and workstations.

The group has a well-equipped machine shop, and the Department of Physics and Astronomy operates a large machine shop with CNC capability that is staffed by three full-time instrument makers.