Analysis of Electric Field in Real Rat Head Model during Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation.

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive technique that uses the principle of electromagnetic induction to generate currents in the brain via pulsed magnetic fields. Although there are some researches about electric field and current density distribution induced by TMS on human brain, similar analyses on other species are rarely known. TMS is often used on rat models before used on human being, then how TMS affects the rat brain is critical information for researchers. In this paper, a real rat head model during transcranial magnetic stimulation is presented. 3D-reconstruction method and finite element method are carried out to calculate the spatial distribution of the electric field. This model is quite useful to design TMS experiments on rats and interpret these results.