The effect of head and coil modeling for the calculation of induced electric field during transcranial magnetic stimulation

Abstract

In the present work we studied some of the features related to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) computational modeling. Particularly we investigated the impact of head model resolution on the estimated distribution of the induced electric field, as well as the role of the stimulating magnetic coil model in TMS. Using the impedance method we calculated the induced electric field inside a realistic numerical phantom of the human head from a commercially available eight-shaped coil, which was modeled in two ways. The results showed that finer resolution of the model has better performance at tissue interfaces eliminating numerical artifacts of local peaks. Furthermore, the geometrical details of a TMS coil must be taken into account since the predicted amount of volume of brain tissue involved can have great variation. Finally, the secondary magnetic field that is generated by the induced eddy currents in the tissues can be neglected.