Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulator with controllable pulse parameters

The characteristics of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pulses influence the physiological effect of TMS. However, available TMS devices allow very limited adjustment of the pulse parameters. We describe a novel TMS device that uses a circuit topology incorporating two energy storage capacitors and two insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules to generate near-rectangular electric field pulses with adjustable number, polarity, duration, and amplitude of the pulse phases. This controllable pulse parameter TMS (cTMS) device can induce electric field pulses with phase widths of 10-310 µs and positive/negative phase amplitude ratio of 1-56. Compared to conventional monophasic and biphasic TMS, cTMS reduces energy dissipation up to 82% and 57% and decreases coil heating up to 33% and 41%, respectively. We demonstrate repetitive TMS trains of 3000 pulses at frequencies up to 50 Hz with electric field pulse amplitude and width variability less than the measurement resolution (1.7% and 1%, respectively). Offering flexible pulse parameter adjustment and reduced power consumption and coil heating, cTMS enhances existing TMS paradigms, enables novel research applications and could lead to clinical applications with potentially enhanced potency.