Noninvasive Brain Stimulation Using Strong-Coupling Effect of Resonant Magnetics

This paper presents a novel noninvasive electromagnetic brain stimulation system, namely the transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), via strongly coupled magnetic resonances, which is used to improve treatment effects, enrich treatment means, and increase energy utilizations. To achieve expected stimulation effects, the conventional TMS system normally needs strict requirements for the power supply and the circuit. Inevitably, it not only deteriorates the implementability and flexibility of the noninvasive electromagnetic brain stimulation, but also increases the manufacture cost and energy consumption, thus significantly impeding the popularization of TMS technologies. Hence, a novel TMS system is proposed by utilizing the magnetic resonant coupling (MRC) mechanism, aiming to offer a brand new way to fulfill expected stimulation effects. By comparing with conventional TMS systems, the proposed system can effectively increase the strength so as to improve the stimulation depth, enhance the focality so as to prevent from impacting on nonfocal zones, and reduce the requirement on the power and frequency so as to promote the popularization of noninvasive electromagnetic treatments. In this paper, both simulation and experimental results are provided to verify the feasibility and superiority of the proposed MRC-based TMS system.