Medicine — Electroporation Pulse Generators for Ablation & Drug Delivery
The challenge
The challenge in medicine is selectivity. Whatever you're treating — an arrhythmogenic region of the heart, a tumour, a cell population that needs to take up a drug — you need to affect the target and leave everything around it intact.
In cardiac ablation, thermal methods (radiofrequency, cryoablation) work, but heat and cold don't respect tissue boundaries — they damage a margin around the target, not just the target. In oncology and drug delivery, the goal isn't always destruction: irreversible electroporation is used to destroy tumour tissue outright, while reversible electroporation only opens the cell membrane long enough for a drug or gene to get in, without killing the cell.
The mechanism
Electroporation uses short electrical pulses to affect cell membranes, and the pulse parameters determine which of those outcomes you get. In Pulsed Field Ablation (PFA), controlled pulses ablate the cardiac tissue driving an arrhythmia. In oncology, the same underlying mechanism splits two ways: irreversible electroporation destroys tumour tissue outright, while reversible electroporation only opens the membrane temporarily — used for drug or gene delivery rather than destruction. Same physics, different pulse parameters, different outcome.
Where we fit
Medical applications vary widely, but most need very fine control. Too little and the desired effect doesn't happen; too much and surrounding tissue is damaged. Each application has to find that window, and VITAVE systems are built to help you explore and hold it.
In standard voltage mode, each pulse starts at the configured voltage, and current can rise as the load changes during pulsing. Where that's undesirable, current-controlled operation holds the output current instead, letting voltage adjust to the load.
Other capabilities that matter across medical applications:
- Bipolar (biphasic) and unipolar (monophasic) pulsing — PFA catheter systems typically use bipolar electrode configurations; some IRE protocols use unipolar; the platform supports both
- Finely adjustable pulse widths — set pulse length precisely to match the protocol
- Arbitrary sequencing — program the order, timing, and polarity of individual pulses instead of a fixed sequence
- Multi-channel and matrix configurations — more than one electrode pair in the same application
- Multi-frequency impedance measurement — sweep frequencies and read the resulting impedance directly on the device
See also
Relevant capabilities
Relevant products
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