Sunday, May 11, 2025
5/11/2025
Smart Aspiration Catheter Based on Fiber Optic Pressure Sensing for Mechanical Thrombectomy in Stroke - PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Acute ischemic stroke is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide and creates a massive socioeconomic burden. The current standard of care of the ischemic stroke caused by large vessel occlusion is mechanical thrombectomy. This neuro-interventional procedure delivers a catheter into the occluded artery and applies aspiration to engage and remove the blood clot. However, during thrombectomy, the physicians have no reliable way to judge the status of the catheter interaction with the blood clot, leading to uncertainty, multiple attempts, and an unnecessarily high rate of complications, and poor outcomes. The goal of this study is to provide real-time data informing the interventionalist of the catheter/clot/artery interaction during thrombectomy for safe and effective clot removal in stroke treatment. To achieve this goal, a smart aspiration catheter with fiber optic pressure sensors integrated near the tip will be designed, prototyped, and validated to identify 1) a gap between the catheter tip and clot, 2) a jam of catheter with a stiff clot, 3) the collapse of an artery, and 4) the breakage of an engaged clot. These four types of interaction have been observed to be associated with thrombectomy failure and complications in a human cadaveric study. Three specific aims are proposed. In Aim 1, two types of fiber optic pressure sensors with front and side sensing orientations will be designed for catheter integration. These sensors will be fabricated and experimentally calibrated. In Aim 2, the smart catheter with sensor locations, sensing orientations, and ranges will be designed based on a fluid- structure interaction model that calculates the pressure distribution near the catheter tip during the aforementioned four types of catheter-tissue interaction in mechanical thrombectomy. The catheter will be prototyped and evaluated using an engineering bench-top phantom system. In Aim 3, the safety and efficacy of the smart catheter will be validated in human cadaveric brain and rabbit models at Mayo Clinic. This proposed research is innovative, because it makes the current thrombectomy system “smarter” while most ongoing effort in thrombectomy device development focuses on a “stronger” aspiration, and because it is the first of its kind to apply fiber optic pressure sensing to real-time thrombectomy monitoring. This project is significant, because it enables a data-driven, informed, safe, and effective thrombectomy for stroke treatment with potential applications in pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis. This study is designed to strengthen the research environment and support undergraduate student research at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The transdisciplinarity of this project is invaluable to expose students to modern research strategy and attractive to undergraduate students. This research combines theory and practice, aligning well with WPI undergraduate educational goal. The collaboration with Mayo Clinic, a national top medical school, strongly strengthens the research environment and the clinical translation potential at WPI.
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