AN EQUIVALENT BODY-SURFACE CHARGE MODEL REPRESENTING 3-DIMENSIONAL BIOELECTRICAL ACTIVITY

A new surface-source model has been developed to account for the bioel ectrical potential on the body surface. A single-layer surface-charge model on the body surface has been developed to equivalently represent bioelectrical sources inside the body. The boundary conditions on the body surface are discussed in relation to the surface-charge in a hal f-space conductive medium. The equivalent body surface-charge is shown to be proportional to the normal component of the electric field on t he body surface just outside the body. The spatial resolution of the e quivalent surface-charge distribution appears intermediate between tho se of the body surface potential distribution and the body surface Lap lacian distribution. An analytic relationship between the equivalent s urface-charge and the surface Laplacian of the potential was found for a half-space conductive medium. The effects of finite spatial samplin g and noise on the reconstruction of the equivalent surface-charge wer e evaluated by computer simulations. It was found through computer sim ulations that the reconstruction of the equivalent body surface-charge from the body surface Laplacian distribution is very stable against n oise and finite spatial sampling, The present results suggest that the equivalent body surface-charge model may provide an additional insigh t to our understanding of bioelectric phenomena.