Effective Combination of Stimulating Coils for Magnetic Heart Stimulation

Abstract
A combination of stimulating coils was proposed to improve the effect of a magnetic stimulus applied to cardiac muscle. Two flat cylindrical coils were arranged side by side with appropriate angles θ between their surfaces. Both the field calculation and the stimulation experiment of a dog heart indicated that the arrangements with θ=90°∼120° are effective in stimulating the entire volume of the heart. The discrepancies in stimulation effects between different arrangements of the coils were interpreted in terms of the total eddy currents passing through the heart.