By Gareth Halfacree

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have come up with a novel way to accurately track the movements of muscles using tiny implantable magnets — in the hopes the technology could one day help people control prosthetic limbs more naturally.

"We're able to provide the muscle-length tracking functionality of the room-sized X-ray equipment using a much smaller, portable package," claims co-lead author Cameron Taylor of the work on what the researchers are calling "magnetomicrometry," comparing it to traditional X-ray fluoromicrometry, "and we're able to collect the data continuously instead of being limited to the 10-second bursts that fluoromicrometry is limited to."