Membrane Heating in Living Tissues Exposed to Nonthermal Pulsed EM Fields

TL;DR

This study models how pulsed electromagnetic fields cause localized heating in cell membranes, highlighting the effects of membrane capacitance dispersion without significantly raising internal cell temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a multilayer spherical cell model incorporating membrane capacitance dispersion to analyze heating dynamics under pulsed EM exposure.

Findings

Localized membrane heating occurs without significant cytoplasm temperature increase.

Both plasma and nuclear membranes can be dispersive, affecting heating patterns.

Membrane capacitance dispersion influences the extent of localized heating.

Abstract

A bio tissue model consisting of multilayer spherical cells including four nested radial domains (nucleus, nuclear membrane, cytoplasm and plasma membrane) is worked out to derive the cell heating dynamics in presence of membrane capacitance dispersion under pulsed electromagnetic exposure. Two possible cases of frequency-dependent membrana models are discussed: plasma and nuclear membranes are dispersive, only the nuclear memebrane is dispersive . In both models an high localized heating of the membranes occurs, without significant temperature rise in the cytoplasm and nucleoplasm.