Effects of Heterogeneous Surroundings on the Efficacy of Continuous Radiofrequency for Pain Relief

This numerical study highlights the deviation between the predicted lesion volume of the homogeneous and heterogeneous models of the continuous radiofrequency (RF) procedure for pain relief. A three-dimensional computational domain comprising of a realistic anatomy of the target tissue has been considered in the present study. A comparative analysis has been conducted for three different scenarios: (a) completely homogenous domain comprising of only muscle tissue, (b) heterogeneous domain comprising of nerve and muscle tissues, and (c) heterogeneous domain comprising of bone, nerve and muscle tissues. Finite-element-based simulations have been performed for computing the temperature and electrical field distributions during the continuous RF procedures for treating chronic pain. The predicted results reveal that the consideration of heterogeneity within the computational domain results in distorted electric field distribution and leads to the significant reduction in the attained lesion volume during the continuous RF application for pain relief.