Electroporation-induced nerve excitability in human brain model under pulsed electric field tumor ablation

• A mechanism model considering electroporation (EP) current for simulating tumor ablation induced nerve excitability in the human brain was developed for the first time. • EP current reduces the value of and the time to the depolarization peak. • The excitability of the next pulse is suppressed after nodes occurred EP. • The excitatory region of bipolar pulse is smaller than monopolar pulse, and that of human brain model is smaller than ellipsoid model. A mechanism model that considered the effect of electroporation (EP) current to simulate the nerve fiber excitability during pulsed electric field tumor ablation in the human brain was developed for the first time. The results show that the EP current reduces the time to peak depolarization by about 49 μs and the peak value by about 442.9 mV for nerve fibers nodes located 0.5 cm under the tumor after applying 100 μ s monopolar pulse. In addition, when a 7 V monopolar pulse was applied after EP occurred, the action potentials (APs) were generated or not in the model without or with EP current, respectively. Finally, compared with the simple ellipsoidal brain model in our previous study, the same optimal voltage of 3100 V for bipolar pulses to cover the tumor was obtained in both models, and the ablation volumes including healthy tissues in the human brain model was reduced by 0.41 c m 3 when applying the bipolar pulses. The proposed model can reflect the nerve excitability with the realistic brain tissues more accurately than the previous ellipsoidal model, and the simulation results have great significance in pulsed electric field tumor ablation applications.