Investigating the effect of electrode orientation on irreversible electroporation with experiment and simulation

Purpose: In recent years, irreversible electroporation (IRE) has been developed to specifically destroy undesirable tissues as an alternative to surgical resection. In this treatment, placing multiple electrodes in parallel is required to create a uniform electric field distribution. The process of maintaining parallel electrodes is challenging, and the effect of the electrodes’ orientation accuracy has not been investigated quantitatively. This study investigates the impact of the electrode orientation along with various electrode and pulse parameters on the outcomes of IRE. Methods: The electrode configurations that were considered were parallel, forward, and sideward orientation. A numerical model was developed to study the effect of electrode orientation on the electric field distribution, which was validated experimentally on potato tubers as it has similar properties to biological tissue. In addition, a conductivity test was performed to evaluate the conductivity and electroporation threshold of the potatoes. Results: The developed numerical model was validated by comparing the electroporated volumes between potatoes from the experiment and simulation, which achieved a mean dice score of $$0.727\pm 0.046$$0.727 ± 0.046 . The potato has an electrical conductivity of 0.044–0.454 S/m with an electroporation threshold of 375 V/cm. ANOVA test showed that the difference in the electroporated regions obtained between a parallel orientation and a 5 $$^{\circ }$$∘ forward and sideward orientation was not significant. Conclusion: This study showed that the developed numerical models were validated and able to predict the outcome of IRE on potatoes. In addition, a 5 $$^{\circ }$$∘ tolerance on the electrode orientation can be defined to obtain a similar response to the parallel orientation.