Dielectric profile of blood clots to inform ischemic stroke treatments

Abstract

Platelet and fibrin-rich blood clots can respond differently to red blood cell rich clots during ischemic stroke treatment, which includes thrombolysis and mechanical thrombectomy. Currently, there is no accurate way to identify the type of clot in advance of treatment. If the type of blood clot can be identified, the optimum clot removal process can be chosen and patient outcomes can be improved. In this paper we fabricate physiologically relevant blood clot analogues from human blood, that cover a range of red blood cell, fibrin, and platelet concentrations. We characterize the dielectric profile of these formed clots using an open-ended coaxial probe method across a wide frequency range. After the dielectric measurements are completed, histology on each blood clot is performed to determine the concentration of red blood cells present. In total, 32 unique blood clots were measured. With this completed analysis, we investigate the correlation between the dielectric properties across this frequency range and the red blood cell count of the formed blood clots. Furthermore, we develop a model to predict whether an unknown blood clot can be categorized as red blood cell rich or platelet and fibrin-rich based solely on the measured dielectric properties.