Visible Human Utilization to Render Induced Electric Field and Current Density Images Inside the Human

Abstract

The external and internal exposure to power frequency electromagnetic field, generated by high-voltage power transmission lines, raises serious safety concerns. Since we cannot measure the induced electric fields and current densities inside the human body, we used the Visible Human (VH) to investigate the induced electric fields and currents in human body tissues and organs of a worker standing 2 m away from conductor phase C of a double-circuit 132 kV transmission line. The double circuit 132 kV 60 Hz transmission line has a power rating of 293 MVA and a maximum recorded peak load current of 603 A. Charge simulation method and the Biot-Savart law have been used for computation of external electric and magnetic fields. Finite-difference time-domain technique was used to calculate the organs' internal induced electric field and circulating current densities in more than 40 different tissues of the VH with 3 mm voxel size. The simulation indicates that, at 2 m away from a 132 kV transmission line, the computed external electric field is 6.485 kV/m and the external magnetic field is 66.4 muT, which are below the limits set by the IEEE standards for external exposure for live-line workers. The maximum induced electric fields in the brain and heart are 23 and 14 mV/m, respectively. These values are below the IEEE standard recommended limits of 53 mV/m for the brain and 943 mV/m for the heart. The VH data allowed us to obtain two- and three-dimensional images of the induced electric field and current density distribution in different organs, tissues, and cross-sections of the human body.