Analysis of Numerical Artifacts Using Tetrahedral Meshes in Low Frequency Numerical Dosimetry

Anatomical realistic voxel models of human beings are commonly used in numerical dosimetry to evaluate the human exposure to low-frequency electromagnetic fields. The downside of these models is that they do not correctly reproduce the boundaries of curved surfaces. The stair-casing approximation errors introduce computational artifacts in the evaluation of the induced electric field and the use of post-processing filtering methods is essential to mitigate these errors. With a suitable exposure scenario, this paper shows that tetrahedral meshes make it possible to remove stair-casing errors. However, using tetrahedral meshes is not a sufficient condition to completely remove artifacts, because the quality of the tetrahedral mesh plays an important role. The analyses carried out show that in real exposure scenarios, other sources of artifacts cause peak values of the induced electric field even with regular meshes. In these cases, the adoption of filtering techniques cannot be avoided.

Automated summary

Anatomical realistic voxel models are commonly used in numerical dosimetry to evaluate human exposure to low-frequency electromagnetic fields. However, these models do not accurately reproduce the boundaries of curved surfaces, leading to computational errors. This paper shows that tetrahedral meshes can help mitigate these errors, but the quality of the mesh is crucial. Real exposure scenarios may still result in artifacts even with regular meshes, necessitating the use of filtering techniques.