title: Simulating pad-electrodes with high-definition arrays in transcranial electric stimulation.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Research studies on transcranial electric stimulation, including direct current, often use a computational model to provide guidance on the placing of sponge-electrode pads. However, the expertise and computational resources needed for finite element modeling (FEM) make modeling impractical in a clinical setting. Our objective is to make the exploration of different electrode configurations accessible to practitioners. We provide an efficient tool to estimate current distributions for arbitrary pad configurations while obviating the need for complex simulation software.
  
  
  METHODS
  To efficiently estimate current distributions for arbitrary pad configurations we propose to simulate pads with an array of high-definition (HD) electrodes and use an efficient linear superposition to then quickly evaluate different electrode configurations.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Numerical results on ten different pad configurations on a normal individual show that electric field intensity simulated with the sampled array deviates from the solutions with pads by only 5% and the locations of peak magnitude fields have a 94% overlap when using a dense array of 336 electrodes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Computationally intensive FEM modeling of the HD array needs to be performed only once, perhaps on a set of standard heads that can be made available to multiple users. The present results confirm that by using these models one can now quickly and accurately explore and select pad-electrode montages to match a particular clinical need.
authors: Department of Biomedical Engineering, City College of the City University of New York, New York, NY 10031, USA. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany.
authors: René
authors: R
authors: Kempe
authors: Yu
authors: Y
authors: Huang
authors: Lucas C
authors: LC
authors: Parra
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D046690:Deep Brain Stimulation / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D004867:Equipment Design / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008839:Microelectrodes; D008953:Models, Anatomic