Application of the boundary element method to the solution of anisotropic electromagnetic problems

The paper discusses the application of the boundary element method to the computation of the electric potential and magnetic field generated by bioelectric sources in an anisotropic inhomogeneous volume conductor, using a proper coordinate transformation. It is shown that the co-ordinate transformation generally not only affects the conductivity and geometry of the volume conductor under consideration, but also the current source term and the continuity relation on the interfaces bounding regions of different conductivity. To illustrate these results, the electric potentials in an anisotropic finite length cylinder and in an anisotropic volume conductor of irregular (torso) shape, computed by the boundary element method, are compared with the results obtained by the analytical solution and the finite element method, respectively.