Current Distribution in The Tissue During Electroporation Process

Electroporation is a minimally invasive non-thermal ablation technique used in undesired tissue removal. Even though it has a minimal thermal effect on the tissue, some Joule heating occurs during and after the pulse application. It is highly important and desired to know the actual thermal stress of the tissue in order to prevent coagulation necrosis. The first step towards modelling of the thermal stress is a calculation of electric field intensity and current density. It is necessary to approximate the variable tissue conductivity, which is discussed in this article.

I. Introduction

Electroporation is a process of disrupting the cell membrane. A short high voltage pulse applied to the cell can influence the cell in three ways. It can have no effect at all, it can cause the creation of reversible damage which the cell will survive or irreversible damage which leads to the cell death. The high voltage pulse increases the transmembrane voltage over the cell’s threshold and leads to structural rearrangement of the lipid bilayer within the cell membrane. Nano-size aqueous pathways (pores) in the membrane allow ions and macromolecules to pass through the membrane which would not be possible at a normal stage [1]. A theory behind the pore formation can be found in [2].