Background and objectives

Electroporation is the phenomenon by which cell membrane permeability to ions and macromolecules is increased when the cell is briefly exposed to high electric fields. In electroporation-based treatments, such exposure is typically performed by delivering high voltage pulses across needle electrodes in tissue. For a given tissue and pulsing protocol, an electric field magnitude threshold exists that must be overreached for treatment efficacy. However, it is hard to preoperatively infer the treatment volume because the electric field distribution intricately depends on the electrodes’ positioning and length, the applied voltage, and the electric conductivity of the treated tissues. For illustrating such dependencies, we have created EView (https://eview.upf.edu), a web platform that estimates the electric field distribution for arbitrary needle electrode locations and orientations and overlays it on 3D medical images.

Methods

A client-server approach has been implemented to let the user set the electrode configuration easily on the web browser, whereas the simulation is computed on a dedicated server. By means of the finite element method, the electric field is solved in a 3D volume. For the sake of simplicity, only a homogeneous tissue is modeled, assuming the same properties for healthy and pathologic tissues. The non-linear dependence of tissue conductivity on the electric field due to the electroporation effect is modeled. The implemented model has been validated against a state of the art finite element solver, and the server has undergone a heavy load test to ensure reliability and to report execution times.

Results

The electric field is rapidly computed for any electrode and tissue configuration, and alternative setups can be easily compared. The platform provides the same results as the state of the art finite element solver (Dice = 98.3 ± 0.4%). During the high load test, the server remained responsive. Simulations are computed in less than 2 min for simple cases consisting of two electrodes and take up to 40 min for complex scenarios consisting of 6 electrodes.

Conclusions

With this free platform we provide expert and non-expert electroporation users a way to rapidly model the electric field distribution for arbitrary electrode configurations.

中文翻译：

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EView：用于基于电穿孔的疗法的电场可视化网络平台。

背景和目标

电穿孔是当细胞短暂暴露于高电场时细胞膜对离子和大分子的渗透性增加的现象。在基于电穿孔的治疗中，这种暴露通常是通过在组织中的针电极之间传递高压脉冲来进行的。对于给定的组织和脉冲协议，存在必须超过以达到治疗效果的电场强度阈值。然而，很难在术前推断治疗体积，因为电场分布复杂地取决于电极的位置和长度、施加的电压以及治疗组织的电导率。为了说明这种依赖关系，我们创建了 EView (https://eview.upf.edu)，

方法

已经实施了客户端-服务器方法，让用户可以在网络浏览器上轻松设置电极配置，而模拟是在专用服务器上计算的。通过有限元方法，在 3D 体积中求解电场。为简单起见，假设健康组织和病理组织具有相同的特性，仅对同质组织进行建模。由于电穿孔效应，组织电导率对电场的非线性依赖性被建模。实施的模型已经过最先进的有限元求解器的验证，服务器已经过重负载测试，以确保可靠性并报告执行时间。

结果

可以快速计算任何电极和组织配置的电场，并且可以轻松比较替代设置。该平台提供与最先进的有限元求解器 (Dice = 98.3 ± 0.4%) 相同的结果。在高负载测试期间，服务器保持响应。对于由两个电极组成的简单情况，模拟的计算时间不到 2 分钟，而对于由 6 个电极组成的复杂场景，计算时间长达 40 分钟。

结论

通过这个免费平台，我们为专家和非专家电穿孔用户提供了一种快速模拟任意电极配置的电场分布的方法。