Numerical simulationof pressure wavesin the cochlea inducedbya microwave pulse

Abstract

The pressure waves developing at the cochlea by the irradiation of the body with a plane wave microwave pulse are obtained by numerical simulation, employing a two-step finite-difference timedomain (FDTD) algorithm. First, the specific absorption rate (SAR) distribution is obtained by solving the Maxwell equations on a FDTD grid. Second, the temperature rise due to this SAR distribution is used to formulate the thermoelastic equations of motion, which are discretized and solved by the FDTD method. The calculations are performed for anatomically based full body human models, as well as for a head model. The dependence of the pressure amplitude at the cochlea on the frequency, the direction of propagation, and the polarization of the incident electromagnetic radiation, as well as on the pulse width, was investigated.