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The effect of fontanel on scalp EEG potentials in the neonate
P Gargiulo1, P Belfiore2, E A Friðgeirsson3
1Institute of Biomedical and Neural Engineering, Reykjavik University, Iceland; Department of Science, Landspitali University Hospital, Reykjavik, Iceland.
Objective:
To define how fontanels affect scalp EEG potentials in neonates.
Method:
Realistic finite element method head models were generated with and without fontanels. The electrical activity of the whole cortex was simulated using distributed 54,620 concurrently active cortical dipoles with a uniform random distribution of current densities (0-40 μA/cm2). The overall effects of fontanels on scalp potentials were calculated from finite element forward solution in the vicinity the fontanel region by relative difference measure (RDM*) and magnification factor (MAG), and the skull conductivity was systematically varied from 0.003 to 0.3S/m.
Results:
The neonatal scalp EEG topographies are comparable in models with and without fontanels, with highest amplitudes directly above the anterior fontanel. Quantitatively, comparison of these models elicits negligible differences (RDM*) ∼2% and MAG ∼1.0). However, fontanel contribution to scalp potential was shown to increase sharply with decreases in skull conductivity.
Conclusions:
These results suggest that fontanels may affect neonatal scalp EEG much less than traditionally assumed, and the effect is strongly dependent on skull conductivity.
Significance:
Most neonatal EEG studies can be adequately performed without assuming distortions by fontanels.
