In clinical treatments of a class of tumors,e.g. skin tumors, the drug uptake of tumor tissue is helped by means of a pulsed electric field, which permeabilizes the cell membranes. This technique, which is called electroporation, exploits the conductivity of the tissues: however, the tumor tissue could be characterized by inhomogeneous areas, eventually causing a non-uniform distribution of current. In this paper, the authors propose a field model to predict the effect of tissue inhomogeneity, which can affect the current density distribution. In particular, finite-element simulations, considering non-linear conductivity against field relationship, are developed. Measurements on a set of samples subject to controlled inhomogeneity make it possible to assess the numerical model in view of identifying the equivalent resistance between pairs of electrodes.
In electrochemotherapy (ECT), electric field is applied by means of needle pairs to the tumor tissue in order to permeabilize cell membranes and, as a consequence, enhance the effects of chemotherapeutic drugs. The target tissue is not homogeneous and the electric field, generated by the needle pairs, is strongly affected by the specific electrical characteristics of different tissues. This paper analyzes the effect of tissue in homogeneity by means of numerical models and suitable experiments
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