Context

Epilepsy presurgical evaluation aims to identify brain regions generating pathological activity that can be surgically resected. The current gold standard, stereotaxic electroencephalography (SEEG) is invasive, with implantation of electrodes within the brain. The ERC Advanced OptiMEG project seeks to revolutionize this clinical practice by developing a personalized, non-invasive approach based on optically pumped magnetometers (OPMs). OPMs are a new generation of mobile magnetic sensors that can be placed directly on the scalp.

By leveraging simultaneous SEEG and OPM recordings, OptiMEG aims to learn how to retrieve deep brain activity non-invasively and to validate surface biomarkers of epileptogenic regions. The project builds on strong expertise in MEG, signal processing and software development (Anywave and Epitools) within the Dynamap team of the Institut de Neurosciences des Systèmes in Marseille, as well  as a close collaboration with clinicians at Timone Hospital who are world-level specialists in epilepsy .

Position Description

We are seeking a Signal Processing Engineer to contribute to the development of advanced analysis and modelling tools for OPM-based magnetoencephalography in the context of epilepsy. The successful candidate will play a key role in designing, implementing, and validating signal processing methods to extract and interpret deep brain activity from non-invasive OPM recordings. The position will located within the MEG platform at Timone hospital in Marseille.

Main Responsibilities

The engineer will be involved in the following tasks:

• Develop and implement signal processing pipelines for OPM-MEG and SEEG data (preprocessing, artefact removal, filtering, feature extraction)
• Contribute to source modelling and inverse problem approaches for localizing deep brain generators
• Perform multimodal data analysis combining OPM-MEG, MRI and intracerebral SEEG recordings
• Participate in the machine learning approaches for design and validation of biomarkers using clinical datasets