A Study of white matter and skull inhomogeneous anisotropic tissue conductivities on EEG forward head modeling

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of white matter (WM) and skull inhomogeneous anisotropic tissue conductivities on human head modeling. The inhomogeneity of WM and skull is included using fractional anisotropy (FA) method and the anisotropy is included according to volume constraint in the head model construction. A five-layered spherical head model implemented using finite element method (FEM) is used as a volume conductor with a known current source to measure the electroencephalogram (EEG) on the head surface. Statistical measurement techniques are applied to analyze the EEGs obtained from inhomogeneous anisotropic head models and a homogeneous isotropic model. This study finds that the effects of WM and skull inhomogeneous anisotropy on EEG are significant.