Bioelectromechanical Systems Laboratory, Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24060, USA.
IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2012 Apr;59(4):1076-85. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2012.2182994. Epub 2012 Jan 6.
Irreversible electroporation is a new technique to kill cells in targeted tissue, such as tumors, through a nonthermal mechanism using electric pulses to irrecoverably disrupt the cell membrane. Treatment effects relate to the tissue electric field distribution, which can be predicted with numerical modeling for therapy planning. Pulse effects will change the cell and tissue properties through thermal and electroporation (EP)-based processes. This investigation characterizes these changes by measuring the electrical conductivity and temperature of ex vivo renal porcine tissue within a single pulse and for a 200 pulse protocol. These changes are incorporated into an equivalent circuit model for cells and tissue with a variable EP-based resistance, providing a potential method to estimate conductivity as a function of electric field and pulse length for other tissues. Finally, a numerical model using a human kidney volumetric mesh evaluated how treatment predictions vary when EP- and temperature-based electrical conductivity changes are incorporated. We conclude that significant changes in predicted outcomes will occur when the experimental results are applied to the numerical model, where the direction and degree of change varies with the electric field considered.
不可逆电穿孔是一种通过使用电脉冲以非热机制杀死靶向组织（如肿瘤）中的细胞的新技术，这种方法会不可逆转地破坏细胞膜。治疗效果与组织电场分布有关，可通过数值建模进行预测，以制定治疗计划。脉冲效应会通过热和基于电穿孔（EP）的过程改变细胞和组织特性。本研究通过在单个脉冲和 200 个脉冲协议内测量离体猪肾组织的电导率和温度来表征这些变化。这些变化被纳入具有可变基于 EP 的电阻的细胞和组织等效电路模型中，为其他组织提供了一种根据电场和脉冲长度估计电导率的潜在方法。最后，使用人体肾脏体积网格的数值模型评估了当将基于 EP 和温度的电导率变化的实验结果应用于数值模型时，治疗预测会如何变化。我们的结论是，当将实验结果应用于数值模型时，预测结果会发生显著变化，其中变化的方向和程度随所考虑的电场而变化。
