Abstract
Since there is no way to directly measure the electric current flow inside the human head and no imaging modality can visualize the electric field generated by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), numerical analysis based on finite element method (FEM) has been widely studied. However, because there has been no open software package designed to simulate electric fields generated by tDCS, only a few research groups could use this important technology. In 2013, our group released a GUI-based MATLAB toolbox named COMETS (COMputation of Electric field due to Transcranial current Stimulation), which could simulate various electrode montages in a standard head model. Now, we are releasing a next version of COMETS, named COMETS2, which not only fixed several problems of the previous version but also adopted a realistic but computationally efficient electrode modeling method. COMETS2 is a MATLAB toolbox running under Windows environment. FEM is used for the electric field analysis, and a 4-layer realistic head model is adopted. In COMETS2, we implemented functions for generating realistic saline-soaked sponge electrode models on user selected spots, and applied a new method to reduce the overall computational cost. We used NODE and ELE files supported by TETGEN, and superimposed the analyzed electric potential distribution, electric field intensity, and electric current density on the cortical surface ( Download : Download high-res image (626KB) Download : Download full-size image Fig. 1). Any other head models formatted as NODE and ELE can be applied for individualized tDCS study. COMETS2 can help researchers who are not familiar with numerical methods to analyze electric field distribution generated by tDCS. In particular, our new algorithm accelerating the computational speed might be useful for studies needing repetitive computations, for example, finding optimal electrode positions to stimulate a specific target area. COMETS2 will be available from September 2016 at http://www.cometstool.com .
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