Optimized Transcranial Brain Stimulation for Tumor Treating Fields
Published in Advances in Bioengineering and Clinical Engineering, 2024
Abstract: Transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) is a field that investigates the effects of applying low-intensity electrical currents to the human brain using electrodes placed on the scalp. Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) is one application of TES, that consists of applying alternating electric fields (∼300KHz) to a tumoral region to arrest its growth. The physiological principle is that tumoral cells are killed during the mitosis if the fields are aligned with the cell subdivision direction. The conventional protocol involves switching between two ad-hoc and intuitive anterior-posterior and left-right stimulation patterns. This paper focuses on optimizing the current injection patterns to stimulate the tumoral region, maximizing the average electric field intensity inside the tumor along predefined electric field orientations. The reciprocity theorem is used to optimize the current injection using two electrode arrays: the conventional 36-electrode TTFields array and the 64-electrode 10- 20 electroencephalography array. A realistic head model, including brain tissues and a tumor, is used to solve the forward problem of TES using the finite element method. The performance is evaluated based on the directionality and intensity metrics of the electric field within the tumor. The results show improved performance in terms of directionality and intensity for the optimized patterns compared to the conventional protocol. The proposed optimization approach has the potential to enhance the efficacy of TTFields.
Recommended citation: Dante C. Andrinolo O., M. Fernández-Corazza, and C. Muravchik. "Optimized Transcranial Brain Stimulation for Tumor Treating Fields." Advances in Bioengineering and Clinical Engineering. SABI 2023. IFMBE Proceedings, vol 114., 2024
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