A Study of the Effectiveness of Monophasic Electrical Stimulation in Enhancing Neuromuscular Tissue Function

The process of monophasic electrical stimulation involves the application of unidirectional current pulses to neuromuscular tissues for either diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. Living cells exhibit an electrochemical potential difference across their membrane which is responsible for the excitability of nerves and muscle tissues. This paper investigates the behaviour of transmembrane potential of nerves in response to external electrical stimulation for functional therapy. A major challenge is that high intensity transcutaneous electrical stimulation is required to achieve effective rehabilitation of deep nerve tissues and this can result in skin irritation and even tissue damage. A 2D model of neuromuscular tissue layers was developed and electrical stimulation with different intensity values were applied to the model using a bipolar electrode arrangement to study and visualize the effects on both surface and deep nerves. Activating function which is a measure of the effectiveness of bipolar electrical stimulation was computed to study performance. From the results obtained, it was observed that the maximum values of the activating function obtained for the applied stimulating signals on the surface nerve were consistently higher than that the maximum values obtained for deep nerves. This means that transcutaneous electrical stimulation is more effective on nerves close to the skin than those that are far beneath.