title: An anatomically realistic whole-body pregnant-woman model and specific absorption rates for pregnant-woman exposure to electromagnetic plane waves from 10 MHz to 2 GHz.
abstract: The numerical dosimetry of pregnant women is an important issue in electromagnetic-field safety. However, an anatomically realistic whole-body pregnant-woman model for electromagnetic dosimetry has not been developed. Therefore, we have developed a high-resolution whole-body model of pregnant women. A new fetus model including inherent tissues of pregnant women was constructed on the basis of abdominal magnetic resonance imaging data of a 26-week-pregnant woman. The whole-body pregnant-woman model was developed by combining the fetus model and a nonpregnant-woman model that was developed previously. The developed model consists of about 7 million cubical voxels of 2 mm size and is segmented into 56 tissues and organs. This pregnant-woman model is the first completely anatomically realistic voxel model that includes a realistic fetus model and enables a numerical simulation of electromagnetic dosimetry up to the gigahertz band. In this paper, we also present the basic specific absorption rate characteristics of the pregnant-woman model exposed to vertically and horizontally polarized electromagnetic waves from 10 MHz to 2 GHz.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, 4-2-1 Nukuikitamachi, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8795, Japan.
authors.forename: Tomoaki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nagaoka
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Science and Technology, Chiba University, 1-33 Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan.
authors.forename: Toshihiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Togashi
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Frontier Medical Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33 Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan.
authors.forename: Kazuyuki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Saito
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Frontier Medical Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33 Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan.
authors.forename: Masaharu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Takahashi
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, 1-33 Yayoi-cho, Inage-ku, Chiba 263-8522, Japan.
authors.forename: Koichi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ito
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, 4-2-1 Nukuikitamachi, Koganei, Tokyo 184-8795, Japan.
authors.forename: Soichi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Watanabe
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D005333:Fetus / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008953:Models, Anatomic; D011247:Pregnancy; D011827:Radiation; D011829:Radiation Dosage; D014915:Whole-Body Counting / Q000379:methods