Intercomparisons of computed epithelial/absorbed power density and temperature rise in anatomical human face models under localized exposures at 10 GHz and 30 GHz

<i>Objective</i>. Epithelial/absorbed power density (EPD/APD) was recently introduced in the latest revision of international exposure guidelines as a dosimetric quantity associated with body surface temperature rise. To provide insight into their relationship, the intercomparison was organized by the IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee 95 Subcommittee 6 Working Group 5 and carried out by an international task force comprising eight governmental, academic, and industrial research institutions.<i>Approach</i>. EPD/APD was evaluated for exposure from the antenna in proximity to human face models. Two high-resolution anatomical face models were used for comparison, which were extracted from anatomical whole-body models with refined resolution to ensure computational accuracy at 10 GHz and 30 GHz. The participants were encouraged to use consistent computational conditions as much as possible, such as the human model, antenna type and position, and frequency, without limitations on the averaging method of the EPD/APD, computational methods, and software for electromagnetic and thermal calculations.<i>Main results</i>. Our results suggest that when appropriate averaging methods are applied, spatially averaged APD and temperature rise in realistic human face models are statistically correlated.<i>Significance</i>. The analysis also revealed that the power absorption focality caused by antenna type had a more pronounced impact on variability than differences in the averaging method or anatomical modeling.