The effect of dipole housing and feeding wires in physical phantoms for EEG

Abstract

Abstract Current dipoles are well established models in the localization of neuronal activity to electroencephalography (EEG) data. In physical phantoms, current dipoles can be used as signal sources. Current dipoles are often powered by constant current sources connected via twisted pair wires mostly consisting of copper. The poles are typically formed by platinum wires. These wires as well as the dipole housing might disturb the electric potential distributions in physical phantom measurements. We aimed to quantify this distortion by comparing simulation setups with and without the wires and the housing. The electric potential distributions were simulated using finite element method (FEM). We chose a homogenous volume conductor surrounding the dipoles, which was 100 times larger than the size of the dipoles. We calculated the difference of the electric potential at the surface of the volume conductor between the simulations with and without the connecting wires and the housing. Comparing simulations neglecting all connecting wires and the housing rod to simulations considering them, the electric potential at the surface of the volume conductor differed on average by 2.85 %. Both platinum and twisted pair copper wires had a smaller effect on the electric potentials with a maximum average change of 6.38 ppm. Consequently, source localization of measurements in physical head phantoms should consider these rods in the forward model.