title: The passive DC conductivity of human tissues described by cells in solution.
abstract: The electrical conductivity of human tissue at low frequencies is discussed when a uniform electric field is applied to some tissue containing many cells. Human tissue is described as a suspension of particles in a conducting solution. Relations are derived for the apparent conductivity of a cell surrounded by a membrane. These relations can be used to estimate the accuracy of a model that considers the cell as a non-conducting particle. Usually, a tissue is composed of several types of particles. A relationship that expresses the effective conductivity of a suspension of one type of ellipsoidal particles could be found in the literature. The orientation of the particles could be uniform or they could be randomly distributed. For non-conducting particles, this expression is known as Archie's law. The expression is extended such that also the effective conductivity of a suspension of various types of particles can be calculated. The result is evaluated for the cortex of the brain using experimental data given in the literature.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, Biomagnetic Centre, University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands. m.j.peters@tn.utwente.nl
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Peters
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hendriks
authors.forename: J G
authors.initials: JG
authors.lastname: Stinstra
mesh_terms: D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000166:cytology / Q000502:physiology*; D004553:Electric Conductivity; D006801:Humans; D012996:Solutions
chemical_list: D012996:Solutions