f2MOVE: fMRI-compatible haptic object manipulation system for closed-loop motor control studies

Functional neuroimaging plays a key role in addressing open questions in systems and motor neuroscience directly applicable to brain machine interfaces. Building on our low-cost motion capture technology (fMOVE), we developed f2MOVE, an fMRI-compatible system for 6DOF goal-directed hand and wrist movements of human subjects enabling closed-loop sensorimotor haptic experiments with simultaneous neuroimaging. f2MOVE uses a high-zoom lens high frame rate camera and a motion tracking algorithm that tracks in real-time the position of special markers attached to a hand-held object in a novel customized haptic interface. The system operates with high update rate (120 Hz) and sufficiently low time delays (< 20 ms) to enable visual feedback while complex, goal-oriented movements are recorded. We present here both the accuracy of our motion tracking against a reference signal and the efficacy of the system to evoke motor control specific brain activations in healthy subjects. Our technology and approach thus support the real-time, closed-loop study of the neural foundations of complex haptic motor tasks using neuroimaging.