golgi: an open-source graphical platform for image-to-recruitment modeling of peripheral nerve stimulation

Authors

Lung, D., Jia, Y., Blumer, R., Reissig, L., Zopf, L. M., Heimel, P., Kraus, C., Moro, A., Fachino, M., Haberbusch, M.

Abstract

Computational models of peripheral nerve stimulation-coupling finite-element bioelectric fields to biophysical axon models-have become essential for designing electrodes and waveforms for neuromodulation therapies. Yet the established open tools are code-first and assume substantial modeling expertise, and several depend on commercial finite-element solvers, placing realistic nerve modeling out of reach for many experimentalists and clinicians. We present golgi, an open-source platform that takes a peripheral nerve from image to stimulated fiber population through a single graphical interface, with an equivalent scriptable Python API and command-line interface for batch studies. golgi integrates the full pipeline: image segmentation (or import of surfaces or masks), automated multi-region tetrahedral meshing, anisotropic finite-element solution of the extracellular field with explicit perineurium contact impedance, generation of realistic fiber populations and their three-dimensional trajectories (straight, or curved via a quasi-static streamline solver), and biophysical activation thresholds through interchangeable NEURON and a GPU-accelerated surrogate backend. We demonstrate golgi on extruded multifascicular swine and human cervical vagus nerves and on real three-dimensional, branching human and rabbit vagus nerves reconstructed from micro-computed tomography. It reproduces the physiological fiber-diameter recruitment order, quantifies fascicular selectivity and current steering with a multi-contact cuff electrode, and resolves anatomically defined nerve branches. Using this branch resolution, we find that selectively engaging a vagal cardiac branch from a proximal cuff depends on anatomy. In the rabbit, whose cardiac fibers are predominantly small and whose superior cardiac branch forms a discrete, spatially segregated tract, current steering isolates even its small cardiac (B-type) fibers; in the human cervical vagus only the large myelinated fibers are separable, because the high thresholds of the small cardiac fibers force stimulus currents that also recruit off-target fibers. Every study can be exported as an integrity-hashed, self-contained bundle whose finite-element-to-recruitment provenance is verifiable byte-for-byte with a single command-a reproducibility guarantee absent from existing tools. By combining non-specialist usability, anatomical realism, and verifiable reproducibility in one open package, golgi lowers the barrier to in-silico peripheral nerve stimulation modeling. golgi is freely available as open-source software.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 14 Jul 2026.

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