SUMMARY
Electromagnetic fields are involved in several therapeutic and diagnostic applications such as hyperthermia and electroporation. For these applications, pulsed electric fields (PEFs) and transient phenomena are playing a key role for understanding the biological response due to the exposure to non-ionizing wideband pulses. To this end, the PEF propagation in the six-layered planar structure modeling the human head has been studied. The electromagnetic field and the specific absorption rate (SAR) have been calculated through an accurate finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) dispersive modeling based on the fractional derivative operator. The temperature rise inside the tissues due to the electromagnetic field exposure has been evaluated using both the non-thermoregulated and thermoregulated Gagge’s two-node models. Moreover, additional parametric studies have been carried out with the aim to investigate the thermal response by changing the amplitude and duration of the electric pulses.