Speaker
Description
Irreversible electroporation (IRE) is a promising non-thermal ablation technique for cutaneous melanoma, where high-voltage, short-duration electric pulses induce permanent membrane permeabilisation and cell death. We present a coupled multiphysics framework integrating a thermo-poromechanical model of skin with a nonlinear electroporation model. The tissue response is described within the GENERIC (General Equation for Non-Equilibrium Reversible-Irreversible Coupling) framework, providing a thermodynamically consistent formulation. The skin is modelled as a uid-saturated porous medium governed by energy and entropy functionals through Hamiltonian and Onsager operators satisfying a noninteraction condition ensuring energy conservation and entropy production. The electroporation component uses a model where tissue conductivity increases nonlinearly with the local electric eld via a sigmoid law. The
coupling arises naturally: Joule heating enters the poromechanical thermal balance, while the heterogeneous temperature eld inuences conductivity and the electric eld distribution, yielding spatially varying temperature proles critical for delineating the ablation zone. In this preliminary study, we consider an idealised geometry with a skin slab and planar needle electrodes, solved via the nite element method. Results show that neglecting the poromechanical response leads to errors in the predicted ablation volume. Future work will incorporate realistic morphologies from photonics-based imaging.
Bibliography
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