Dynamical regimes of excitable cells under pulsed electric fields: From excitation to electroporation

In a planar two-bilayer Hodgkin-Huxley model coupled to electroporation kinetics, nsPEFs show a safety gap: for an equivalent RC time constant of 10 ns, pulses shorter than ~20 ns electroporate before excitation.

• Why it matters: Excitation-based therapies and electroporation-based therapies have opposing safety goals, and coupled excitation–electroporation dynamics span nanoseconds to milliseconds that experiments cannot resolve simultaneously.
• What they did: The authors compute transmembrane potentials, pore statistics, and pore-size evolution using a Hodgkin-Huxley framework coupled with the Asymptotic Smoluchowski Equation for electroporation.
• The result: They predict that for 1-ns pulses the safety factor falls below 5%, map strength–duration curves for regimes of safe excitation without electroporation (and vice versa), and identify possible inviability regimes from irreversible electroporation or excessive fractional pore area.