Finite difference neuroelectric modeling software

This paper describes a finite difference neuroelectric modeling software (FNS), written in C and MATLAB, which can be executed as a standalone program or integrated with other packages for electroencephalography (EEG) analysis. The package from the Oxford Center for Functional MRI of the Brain (FMRIB), FMRIB Software Library (FSL), is used to segment the anatomical magnetic resonance (MR) image for realistic head modeling. The EEG electrode array is fitted to the realistic head model using the Bioelectromagnetism MATLAB toolbox. The finite difference formulation for a general inhomogeneous anisotropic body is used to obtain the system matrix equation, which is then solved using the conjugate gradient algorithm. The reciprocity theorem is utilized to limit the number of required forward solutions to N-1, where N is the number of electrodes. Results show that the forward solver only requires 500 MB of random-access memory (RAM) for a realistic 256×256×256 head model and that the software can be conveniently combined with inverse algorithms such as beamformers and MUSIC. The software is freely available under the GNU Public License.