Identifying Locations for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Coil Placement For Deep Brain Structures

Abstract

Stimulation of deep brain structures with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is the premier mode of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS). Currently, there is little support for the application of TMS in modulating deeper brain structures. This study validates the use of TMS for a set of 8 deep brain structures shown to alleviate symptoms of certain conditions when stimulated. 200 sets of T1-weighted and T2-weighted MRIs were processed using the SimNIBS headreco pipeline. Then, 200 TMS optimization simulations were run for each brain structure, which generated 200 3D coordinates for each structure representing the best TMS coil placement locations on the scalp for stimulation. This data was analyzed using K-means and agglomerative clustering methods to find the overall best coil placement locations. Overall, this study validates the use of TMS to stimulate these brain structures and finds the optimal parameters for stimulation.