3D BIOELECTROMAGNETIC COMPUTATION ON FINITE ELEMENTS

Abstract

Finite element computation of electric and magnetic fields induced in the body by noninvasive electromagnetic sources is discussed. Attention is focussed on three-dimensional calculations for full-scale body models with significant levels of internal anatomical structure. The finite element solution strategy including the sparse matrix approach which allows computation of over 100K degrees-of-freedom on standard reduced instruction set computer (RISC) workstation platforms is outlined. The finite element mesh generation problem is also described. Representative examples of the level of meshing detail and the type of 3D bioelectromagnetic solutions that can be achieved using finite elements in the workstation computing environment are shown. [Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 9-25 (1992), Special Issue on Bioelectromagnetic Computations]