Evaluation of Epistemic Uncertainties for Bipolar Deep Brain Stimulation in Rodent Models

Rodent models are widely used in research on deep brain stimulation (DBS) for testing hypotheses of the action mechanism. However, differences in anatomy and technology for DBS in humans and rodents might lead to a non-identical effect on the neural activity. Particularly, strong deviations can be introduced by epistemic uncertainties related to the electrode implantation. In this study, the influence of encapsulation layer properties and implantation precision on axonal activation is quantified using polynomial chaos expansion. In order to improve the efficiency of computations, three truncation methods for the signal frequency spectrum are proposed and evaluated, allowing a tenfold speedup in the particular study. The results of uncertainty quantification on the axonal activity inside the targeted nucleus suggest a major effect of the encapsulation thickness, while the precision of implantation is found to be crucial due to possible direct activation in neighboring structures.