Patent ID: 7301332

Claim:
A medical magnetic position tracking system, comprising: a probe for insertion into a patient; a first magneto-resistive field sensor in a first surface-mountable package, which is arranged to measure first and second components of a magnetic field projected onto respective different first and second axes with respect to a spatial orientation of the first field sensor and to produce first position signals indicative of the measured first and second components; a second magneto-resistive field sensor in a second surface-mountable package, which is arranged to measure at least a third component of the magnetic field projected onto at least a third axis with respect to the spatial orientation of the second field sensor, and to produce second position signals indicative of the measured third component; and a substrate assembly having the first and second field sensors surface-mounted thereon, which is coupled to orient the first field sensor in a first spatial orientation and to orient the second field sensor in a second spatial orientation so that the third axis is oriented out of a plane containing the first and second axes; and a processing unit for receiving the first position signals and the second position signals and calculating six-dimensional coordinate information of the probe.