Advanced hepatic ablation technique for creating complete cell death: irreversible electroporation.

Purpose: To evaluate the effectiveness of irreversible electroporation (IRE) in hepatic tissue ablation and the radiologic-pathologic correlation of IRE-induced cell death.

Materials And Methods: On approval of the animal research committee, 16 Yorkshire pigs underwent ultrasonography (US)-guided IRE of normal liver. A total of 55 ablation zones were created, which were imaged with US, magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, and computed tomography (CT) and evaluated with immunohistochemical analysis, including hematoxylin-eosin (H-E), Von Kossa, and von Willibrand factor (vWF) staining and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay.