title: In situ electric fields causing electro-stimulation from conductor contact of charged human.
abstract: Contact currents flow from/into a human body when touching an object such as a metal structure with a different electric potential. These currents can stimulate muscle and peripheral nerves. In this context, computational analyses of in situ electric fields caused by the contact current have been performed, while their effectiveness for transient contact currents has not well been investigated. In the present study, using an anatomically based human model, a dispersive finite-difference time-domain model was utilised to computed transient contact current and in situ electric fields from a charged human. Computed in situ electric fields were highly localised in the hand. In order to obtain an insight into the relationship between in situ electric field and electro-stimulation, cell-maximum and 5-mm averaged in situ electric fields were computed and compared with strength-duration curves. The comparison suggests that both measures could be larger than thresholds derived from the strength-duration curves with parameters used in previous studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Nagoya Institute of Technology, Gokiso-cho, Syowa-ku, Nagoya-shi 466-8555, Japan.
authors.forename: Toshihiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nagai
authors.forename: Akimasa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hirata
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D004553:Electric Conductivity; D004558:Electric Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D004560:Electricity; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009132:Muscles / Q000528:radiation effects; D009420:Nervous System / Q000528:radiation effects; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D011874:Radiometry / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software; D013997:Time Factors