Electroporation Modelling Based on the Effective Thickness of Irregularly Shaped Cell Membrane and the Dynamics of Pore Sizes

Abstract

In this study, the electroporation phenomenon induced by pulsed electric field on irregularly shaped biological cells has been analyzed. To this aim, a nonlinear dispersive multiphysic numerical algorithm solving Maxwell equations in conjunction with the differential equations modelling both pore density and size dynamics has been implemented. Moreover, the developed numerical algorithm takes into account the dielectric relaxation of the membrane based on the second order Debye equation as well as it models the irregular plasma membrane geometry by employing the Gielis superformula. Furthermore, the spatial and temporal evolution of the pore size has been considered in the numerical computation. Using the implemented algorithm, a numerical investigation has been carried out in order to compare the realistic model considering the thin thickness of the plasma membrane with the simplified model in which the plasma membrane is modeled as a distributed impedance boundary condition. The obtained results show differences between the two models, highlighting the need to consider in the numerical analysis the real thickness of the plasma membrane in order to correctly analyze the electroporation process. This remark becomes of greater importance especially when nanosecond pulsed electric fields are used.