Quantifying uncertainty in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation - A high resolution simulation study in ICBM space.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation offers enormous potential for noninvasive brain stimulation. While it is known that brain tissue significantly "reshapes" induced field and charge distributions, most modeling investigations to-date have focused on single-subject data with limited generality. Further, the effects of the significant uncertainties which exist in the simulation (i.e. brain conductivity distributions) and stimulation (e.g. coil positioning and orientations) setup have not been quantified. In this study, we construct a high-resolution anisotropic head model in standard ICBM space, which can be used as a population-representative standard for bioelectromagnetic simulations. Further, we employ Monte-Carlo simulations in order to quantify how uncertainties in conductivity values propagate all the way to induced field and currents, demonstrating significant, regionally dependent dispersions in values which are commonly assumed "ground truth". This framework can be leveraged in order to quantify the effect of any type of uncertainty in noninvasive brain stimulation and bears relevance in all applications of TMS, both investigative and therapeutic.
Medical Phsyics Section, Faculty of Medicine, University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. toschi@med.uniroma2.it
Nicola
N
Toschi
Martin E
ME
Keck
Tobias
T
Welt
Maria
M
Guerrisi
D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006257:Head / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D050781:Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation