Patent ID: 8380289

Claim:
A medical device locating system for determining disposition of a sensor coil in a subject, said system comprising: a. an array of three or more triplet drive coil sets, each drive coil set including at least three orthogonally arranged discrete drive coils, each of the discrete drive coils being electromagnetic coils; b. at least one sensor coil; c. a first system component that provides AC drive signals energizing said discrete drive coils; wherein the provision of drive signals includes one or both: (i) simultaneously driving two or three said discrete drive coils at two or three separate current intensity or power levels within said triplet drive coil set to generate an electromagnetic field defining a virtual axis; and, (ii) simultaneously driving two or three said discrete drive coils within said triplet drive coil set with one, two or three drive signals with reversed phase; d. a second system component for sequentially energizing said discrete drive coils singly then as virtual pairs or virtual triplets and measuring the resulting single and virtual sensor coil response signals; e. a computing component for calculating sensor coil disposition in the subject relative to said triplet drive coil sets from one or more measured resulting sensor coil response signals.