The monophasic pulse voltage
was applied on the left electrode, and the zero voltage
was applied on the right electrode. The boundary of the plastic catheter and the epicardium represents the zero electric flux condition and is expressed as:
where
is the normal unit vector to the epicardium surface.
As shown in
Figure 4, a typical monophasic PFA waveform usually contains parameters such as pulse width, pulse amplitude, pulse interval, pulse number, etc. The ranges of PFA parameters used in this study were derived from the PFA in AF treatment [20 (
link)] or animal experiences [21 (
link),22 (
link)], as shown in the following:
The pulse width of
is fixed at 100 μs as used in most studies; the pulse amplitude ranges from 1000 V to 2000 V [20 (
link)]; the pulse interval ranges from 250 ms to 1000 ms [21 (
link)]; and the pulse number ranges from 10 to 60 [22 (
link)].
In order to highlight the influence of a single PFA parameter on the temperature rise and myocardial ablation volume of the model, this study took the remaining PFA parameters as the minimum influence on the temperature rise during PFA when investigating a single PFA parameter (minimum pulse amplitude: 1000 V, maximum pulse interval: 1000 ms, and minimum pulse number: 10). The details of the PFA parameter setting are listed in
Table 1.
It can be seen from
Table 1 that the influence of different PFA parameters on the temperature rise and ablation volume of the model was investigated in each of the three consecutive groups, including group 1 to 3 for pulse amplitude, group 4 to 6 for pulse interval, and group 7 to 9 for pulse number.