Pulse Electric Field analysis on breast cancer model

High Voltage Engineering has explored its applications in various fields. This paper includes one such application of High Voltage Engineering. Pulse Electric Field (PEF) is an emerging bioelectrical technology that has showed its potential in cancer therapy. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Worldwide, it is estimated that more than 1.68 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, with incidence rates varying across the world. The breast cancer mortality rate is increasing in developing countries, especially in India. Conventional therapies are being very cost effective with higher side effects without complete cure necessitates the new treatment for cancer. Early detection of cancer may save thousands of lives each year. In this paper modeling of normal breast and cancerous breast tumor phantoms were done separately and the pulsed electric field effect on modeled phantoms were observed. By using different mimicking materials, breast, tumor and breast with tumor phantoms were modeled which matches the dielectric properties of original tissues. The dielectric properties of modeled phantoms were validated by using Debye model. Here the phantoms are exposed to 1kV and 2kV for 10 pulses with rise time of 1.2μs and fall time of 50μs time duration and its changes in dielectric properties were observed by using Impedance Analyzer. Decrease in permittivity and increase in conductivity over the frequency range of 50Hz to 50MHz were observed. Effect of pulsed electric field on the tumor phantom reduces its permittivity which reaches almost nearer to the permittivity of normal tissue and the conductivity of the tumor phantom is increased due to formation of pores which activates electroporation. The phantoms treated with 2kV/cm shows better results when compared to the phantoms treated with 1kV/cm using needle electrode configuration.