Effects of local tissue conductivity on spherical and realistic head models

Abstract

In this study, we consider different conductivity values based on tissue location in a human head model. We implement local conductivity (LC) to compute head surface potentials in three-, four-layered spherical and realistic head models using finite element method (FEM). Implementing LC for all head models, we obtain significant scalp potential variations in the term of relative difference measurement (RDM) and magnification (MAG) values with a maximum of 2.03 +/- A 1.81 and 8.27 +/- A 6.36, respectively. We also investigate the effects of conductivity variations (CVs) of head tissue layer on scalp potentials and find a maximum of 2.15 +/- A 1.93 RDM and 8.57 +/- A 6.61 MAG values. Our study concludes that it is important to assign LC to each tissue and it is also important to assign appropriate conductivity value in the construction of a head model for achieving accurate scalp potentials.