Optimized transcranial brain stimulation for tumor treating fields

ANDRINOLO, DANTE; FERNANDEZ CORAZZA, MARIANO; MURAVCHIK, CARLOS

Congreso; XXIV CONGRESO ARGENTINO DE BIOINGENIERÍA Y XIII JORNADAS DE INGENIERÍA CLÍNICA; 2023

Transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) is a field that investigatesthe effects of applying low-intensity electrical currents to thehuman brain using electrodes placed on the scalp. Tumor Treating Fields(TTFields) is one application of TES, that consists of applying alternatingelectric fields (∼300KHz) to a tumoral region to arrest its growth.The physiological principle is that tumoral cells are killed during themitosis if the fields are aligned with the cell subdivision direction. Theconventional protocol involves switching between two ad-hoc and intuitiveanterior-posterior and left-right stimulation patterns. This paperfocuses on optimizing the current injection patterns to stimulate the tumoralregion, maximizing the average electric field intensity inside the tumoralong predefined electric field orientations. The reciprocity theoremis used to optimize two electrode arrays: the conventional 36-electrodeTTFields array and the 64-electrode 10-20 electroencephalography array.A realistic head model, including brain tissues and a tumor, is usedto solve the forward problem of TES using the finite element method.The performance is evaluated based on the directionality and intensitymetrics of the electric field within the tumor. The results show improvedperformance in terms of directionality and intensity for the optimizedpatterns compared to the conventional ones. The proposed optimizationapproach has the potential to enhance the efficacy of TTFields.