Effects of electroconvulsive therapy stimulus pulsewidth and amplitude computed with an anatomically-realistic head model

Author

Siwei Bai ; Loo, C. ; Dokos, Socrates

Author_Institution

Grad. Sch. of Biomed. Eng., Univ. of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, NSW, Australia

fYear

2012

fDate

Aug. 28 2012-Sept. 1 2012

Firstpage

2559

Lastpage

2562

Abstract

The efficacy and cognitive outcomes of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) on psychiatric disorders have been shown to depend on variations in treatment technique. In order to investigate this, a high resolution finite element human head model was generated from MRI scans and implemented with tissue heterogeneity and an excitable ionic neural formulations in the brain. The model was used to compare the effects of altered ECT stimulus amplitude and pulse width on the spatial extent of directly activated brain regions. The results showed that decreases in both amplitude and pulse width could effectively lead to reductions in the size of activated brain regions.

Keywords

bioelectric phenomena; biomedical MRI; brain models; finite element analysis; image resolution; medical disorders; medical image processing; patient treatment; MRI scan; anatomically-realistic head model; brain region; cognitive outcome; electroconvulsive therapy stimulus amplitude; electroconvulsive therapy stimulus pulsewidth; excitable ionic neural formulation; high resolution finite element human head model; psychiatric disorder; tissue heterogeneity; Brain modeling; Computational modeling; Conductivity; Electrodes; Head; Humans; Medical treatment; Anisotropy; Computer Simulation; Electroconvulsive Therapy; Head; Humans; Models, Anatomic;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2012 Annual International Conference of the IEEE

Conference_Location

San Diego, CA

ISSN

1557-170X

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4119-8

Electronic_ISBN

1557-170X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EMBC.2012.6346486

Filename

6346486