Comparison and calibration of different electroporation models. Application to rabbit livers experiments

Abstract

Electroporation is a complex phenomenon that occurs when biological tissues are subjected to electric pulses. The clinical interest for the phenomenon has constantly increased for the last decades. Indeed, electroporation makes it possible to either kill directly the cells in the target region (tumor) or to introduce molecules into living cells. However, one of the main limitation of using electroporation in the clinical routine comes from the technical difficulties raised by such therapies, in particular it is difficult to well determine the treated zone. Numerical modeling of the electric field magnitude could provide a powerful strategy to assess the treatment efficacy: thanks to well-designed models, the computation of the distribution of the electric field is achievable, providing a numerical evaluation of the treatment. The main objective of this work is to go further on the patient-adapted numerical modeling of the electric field magnitude by laying the ground of the possible electroporation models - which will be compared qualitatively - and their calibrations. This will be done in the framework of bioelectrical measurements on rabbit livers that come from the literature.