Computational study on thermal effects of coil-based implantable magnetic stimulation using finite element analysis

Although electrical stimulation has been widely used as a means of treating neurological deficits, it has several limitations as implantable devices. In electrical stimulation, electrodes have shown degraded electrical performance over time due to glial scar encapsulation. And, under certain circumstances such as magnetic resonance imaging examination, deep brain stimulator can damage the brain tissue by electrode heating. To overcome such limitations, micro magnetic stimulation was suggested as a novel method. One of the strong points of this method is that no direct contact is required between the target tissue and electrode, because induced currents are used for neural stimulation. In this paper, the maximum temperature rise was estimated depending on the stimulation waveforms applied to the coil using FEA simulation.