Modelling of induced electric fields based on incompletely known magnetic fields.

Determining the induced electric fields in the human body is a fundamental problem in bioelectromagnetics that is important for both evaluation of safety of electromagnetic fields and medical applications. However, existing techniques for numerical modelling of induced electric fields require detailed information about the sources of the magnetic field, which may be unknown or difficult to model in realistic scenarios. Here, we show how induced electric fields can accurately be determined in the case where the magnetic fields are known only approximately, e.g. based on field measurements. The robustness of our approach is shown in numerical simulations for both idealized and realistic scenarios featuring a personalized MRI-based head model. The approach allows for modelling of the induced electric fields in biological bodies directly based on real-world magnetic field measurements.

A novel homogenization procedure to model the skin layers in LF numerical dosimetry.

In this study we focus on the validity of the skin layer currently implemented in up-to-date human-body anatomical models employed in low frequency (LF) numerical dosimetry. Indeed, the several layers of the skin structure, i.e. the stratum corneum (SC), dermis, and epidermis are in these models embedded into a unique fairly-thick (2-3 mm) layer encompassing all of them. While a previous work from the authors showed that for normal-standing (or limb-non-touching) postures a single-layer skin model could conservatively estimate the peak electric field induced in the skin, at least a two-layer skin model comprising of the SC and the remaining skin layers should be used for limb-touching exposure scenarios. This implies notable efforts to discretize the tiny SC layer questioning the validity of current anatomical models. A novel strategy based on the homogenization of the several skin layers has been therefore proposed in order to eliminate the SC from the computational domain opening the doors to future LF magnetic applications even for limb-touching scenarios.