Assessment of Contractile Forces of Swine Skeletal Muscle Following Irreversible Electroporation Therapy

Abstract Irreversible electroporation has regained a new popularity as a robust and effective ablation modality. One concern however that remains is the optimization of the several parameters to further implement the technology in medical therapies; one of the most important effects is the mitigation of muscle stimulation. Here we present the induced contractile force on swine skeletal muscle after delivery of irreversible electroporation therapies. We aim to evaluate two differing waveforms, the classic irreversible electroporation, IRE, with monophasic DC pulses of 100μs pulse widths, and a waveform of High Frequency Irreversible Electroporation, HFIRE. We observed that the short duration pulses of HFIRE, biphasic 2μs pulse width, effectively induced no contractile forces on skeletal muscle. In contrast IRE induced large contractions.