A Software Package for the Modeling of Electrophysiological Activity Data

Abstract

A complex of programs has been developed for computer modeling of multichannel time series recorded in various experiments on electromagnetic fields created by the human body. Sets of coordinates and directions of sensors for magnetic encephalographs of several types, electroencephalographs and magnetic cardiographs are used as models of devices. To study the human brain, magnetic resonance tomograms are used as head models; to study the heart, a body model in the form of a half-space with a flat boundary is used. The sources are placed in the model space, for them the direct problem is solved in the physical model corresponding to the device used. For a magnetic encephalograph and an electroencephalograph, an equivalent current dipole model in a spherical conductor is used, for a magnetic cardiograph, an equivalent current dipole model in a flat conductor or a magnetic dipole model is used. For each source, a time dependence is set and a multichannel time series is calculated. Then the time series from all sources are summed and the noise component is added. The program consists of three modules: an input-output module, a calculation module and a visualization module. The input-output module is responsible for loading device models, brain models, and field source parameters. The calculation module is responsible for directly calculating the field and transforming coordinates between the index system and the head system. The visualization module is responsible for the image of the brain model, the position of the field sources, a graphical representation of the amplitude-time dependence of the field sources and the calculated values of the total field. The user interface has been developed. The software package provides: interactive placement of field sources in the head or body space and editing of the amplitude-time dependence; batch loading of a large number of sources; noise modeling; simulation of low-channel planar magnetometers of various orders, specifying the shape of the device, the number of sensors and their parameters. Magnetic and electric fields produced by sources in the brain areas responsible for processing speech stimuli are considered. The resulting multichannel signal can be used to test various data analysis methods and for the experiment planning.