Sensitivity characteristics of different configurations of software gradiometers used in magnetocardiography

It is common to use high-order (2^nd-3^rd) gradiometers in magnetocardiographic measurements to filter out environmental noise. Such gradiometers consist of several coils connected serially with different polarity. Contemporary technology allows using software gradiometers, which measure signal from each coil separately and sums them with required weights at post processing. So there is a possibility to combine the signals from elementary sensors in different configuration by setting different weights. Such different schemes can be used for purposes of background noise filtering and solving the inverse problem. The subject of this study is to compare several summing configuration in terms of sensitivity to the source parameters.