Design and Implementation of Integrated Simulation Software for Multichannel Modified Electroconvulsive Therapy

Simulation in an individualized real head model based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is increasingly required for safety design of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), which aims to reduce the potential risk of side-effect. To simplify the complicated operational procedures of conventional methods, this paper designs and implements the integrated simulation software for multi-channel ECT on MATLAB platform. Any step in the simulation procedure, in detail, MRI data read, MRI normalization and segmentation, tissue classification and reconstruction, mesh generation, geographic model generation, electrodes placement, parameter configuration and electric field simulation, which are previously performed on COMSOL, MATLAB, AVIZO and other large-scale software platforms, can be performed by just clicking the corresponding item in a MATLAB user-friendly interface. It uses the MATLAB toolboxes to replace specific platforms such as AVIZO to generate mesh. Although it still takes COMSOL as the core, the simulation computations and other operations on COMSOL run in the background by calling corresponding interface functions. In addition, it provides options of the simulation channel number for future developing ECT technique. The software significantly improves the efficiency of data processing and reduces the time cost, which is an easy-to-use tool for ECT simulation.