High-T/sub c/ superconducting image surface magnetometers

We present an overview of the concepts of image surface magnetometry, and analyze various shapes of superconducting shields in the presence of uniform background noise fields and current sources that simulate biomagnetic sources. We show that, for certain geometries and sizes, these shields can selectively shield background noise fields as opposed to signals of interest. We also show that clever use of these shields can, in some cases, allow an undisturbed measurement of the signals of interest while attenuating noise fields by as much as four orders of magnitude.<>