Location and orientation estimation of devices incorporating permanent magnets

A system for estimating a location or an orientation of an invasive medical device, comprising:

• one or more permanent magnets incorporated into the invasive medical device;
• a plurality of magnetic field sensors arranged in a specific topology separate from the invasive medical device, the plurality of magnetic field sensors configured to obtain a plurality of magnetic field measurements of the one or more permanent magnets of the invasive medical device, and the one or more permanent magnets being at a height above the specific topology that is less than or equal to twice a width of the specific topology;
• and
• one or more processors, coupled to the plurality of magnetic field sensors,
• configured to:
• receive the plurality of magnetic field measurements;
• and
• enable a calculation of the location or the orientation of the one or more permanent magnets based on the plurality of magnetic field measurements, wherein enabling the calculation comprises:
• performing, based on the plurality of magnetic field measurements, a geometric feature extraction calculation to generate an initial estimate for each of a plurality of parameters of a model for the location and the orientation of the invasive medical device, and
• performing, based on the plurality of magnetic field measurements and the initial estimate for each of the plurality of parameters, a refinement calculation to generate a convergence metric and a final estimate for each of the plurality of parameters, wherein the refinement calculation comprises an N-dimensional partial derivative driven convergence method that converges a predicted magnetic field measurement value to a corresponding one of the plurality of magnetic field measurements, and wherein N is a positive integer.