Yue Zhang1,2, Haitham M. Al-Angari3,
Yang Guo2, Jodi Nicolai2, Rachel A. Klein2,
Alan V. Sahakian3, Reed A. Omary2,4, Andrew C. Larson2,4
1Bioengineering, University
of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States; 2Radiology,
Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States; 3Electrical
Engineering & Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL,
United States; 4Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center,
Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, United States
Irreversible electroporation (IRE) has recently been applied as a novel tissue ablation modality; IRE involves application of short-lived electrical fields across the cell membrane to permanently increase membrane permeability leading to cell death. 2D finite element methods (FEM) are used to model anticipated electrical field distributions but these typically assume homogeneous tissue conductivity; heterogeneity could lead to poor approximations of subsequent ablation volume. In this work, we developed a 3D FEM approach using pre-procedural MRI measurements to produce a patients-specific 3D surrogate-conductivity map for simulation of IRE ablation zones in a rat model of hepatocellular carcinoma. Our results showed FEM-simulated ablation zones were well correlated to histology-confirmed ablation zones. Thus pre-procedural MRI and 3D FEM can be used to accurately predict IRE ablation zones.
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