Clot Detection

To treat stroke, catheters are sent up the cerebral arteries to localize and retrieve blood clots. However, under fluoroscopy visualization alone, it is impossible to directly visualize the clot and results in some procedures needing to be repeated to ensure recanalization of the vessel. We developed a method we refer to as vacuum excitation, which enables detection of the clot at the catheter’s tip by monitoring the pressure profile within the catheter. In an in-vitro study with expert neurointerventionalists, we showed our that experts were three times more likely to accurately localize the clot with our system compared to fluoroscopic presentation (Lawson et al., 2024)