Calculation of the SAR Induced in Head Tissues Using a High-Order DGTD Method and Triangulated Geometrical Models

The great majority of numerical calculations of the specific absorption rate (SAR) induced in human tissues exposed to microwaves are performed using the finite difference time-domain (FDTD) method and voxel-based geometrical models. The straightforward implementation of the method and its computational efficiency are among the main reasons for FDTD being currently the leading method for numerical assessment of human exposure to electromagnetic waves. However, the rather difficult departure from the commonly used Cartesian grid and cell size limitations regarding the discretization of very detailed structures of human tissues are often recognized as the main weaknesses of the method in this application context. In particular, interfaces between tissues where sharp gradients of the electromagnetic field may occur are hardly modeled rigorously in these studies. We present here an alternative numerical dosimetry methodology which is based on a high order discontinuous Galerkin time-domain (DGTD) method and adapted geometrical models constructed from unstructured triangulations of tissue interfaces, and discuss its application to the calculation of the SAR induced in head tissues.