2-d vs 3-d: The Importance of Modelling in Three Dimensions for Planning Electroporation-Based Treatments

Electrochemotherapy and non-thermal irreversible electroporation are electroporation-based treatments that are entering clinical practice for treating deep-seated tumors. Treatment planning using numerical methods has been proposed to improve the probability of treatment success. In this study the possibility of using 2-d modelling for treatment planning is compared with 3-d approach on a simple computational model. Two different tumor shapes were considered: sphere and prolate spheroid. A total of 1460 cases were computed, and results show that although the coverage is at least 99 % in all the 2-d models, the coverage in the 3-d model falls below 95 % for several of them. There are 175 such cases when using the spherical model and 93 cases when using the prolate spheroid model, which corresponds to 12.7 % of the spherical and 6.7 % of the prolate spheroid models. The lowest coverages in the 3-d model are actually below 75 %. These results show, that when performing treatment planning in 2-d, care should be taken to verify that 3-d coverage is also ensured and properly optimized.