Electroporation Ablation of Liver Tumors: Numerical Strategies for Clinical Insights

Liver cancers are among the most devastating cancers in the world. Even though their incidence is much lower than other carcinomas such as prostate or breast cancers, they are among the leading cancer-related death. Percutaneous ablations, such as radiofrequency ablation (RFA) or cryoablation (CrA) have shown their efficacy, in particular for HCC located far from vital structures such as biliary tree or hepatic vein. However, HCC tumors located near vital blood vessels and pancreatic cancers still suffer from a lack of efficient non surgical therapies. To overcome this therapeutic impasse, electroporation based ablations (EPAs) combined with immunotherapy hold great promises1. However these new ablation techniques are currently underused due to their technical complexity, and the lack of quantitative criteria of assessment.
In my talk I will present recent numerical strategies  to improve percutaneous tumor ablations based on electroporation. Thanks to a combination of advanced computational strategies and mathematical modeling I will show how well-designed numerical tools could be used during the ablation to help interventional radiologists in optimizing the treatments.