Study on Electrical Conductivity Measurement System of Porcine Liver Tissue

Abstract

Irreversible electroporation therapy (IRE) is a new tumor ablation therapy. The IRE treatment method is to place a minimally invasive needle electrode in or around the target area to generate a series of short electrical pulses. This therapy uses electrical pulses to generate an external electric field to change the transmembrane potential of the cell membrane through a non-thermal mechanism, which can irreversibly destroy tumor cells. The effect of IRE treatment on the tissue is related to the distribution of the electric field in the tissue, which depends on the pulse parameters used and the conductivity of the tissue. We built a conductivity measurement system for porcine liver tissue based on a pulse signal generator, and tested the conductivity change of porcine liver tissue due to the electroporation effect of cells. We fitted the experimentally measured conductivity to the applied pulse intensity and got good results. The measurement system built in the experiment is simple and easy to use. Our accurate measurement of conductivity under different pulse width and electric field intensity can effectively improve the accuracy of the numerical model in the treatment planning.