Affiliations: [a] Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yamaguchi
University, 755-8611, Japan. Tel.: +81 00 111 2345; Fax: +81 00 111 6789;
E-mail: {jiang, a089fb, t-wata}@yamaguchi-u.ac.jp | [b] Department of Neurosurgery, School of Medicine,
Yamaguchi University, 755-8505, Japan. Tel.: +81 75 999 8765; Fax: +81 75 999
4321; E-mail: kato-ygc@umin.ac.jp; michi@yamaguchi-u.ac.jp
Abstract: A cerebral thrombus or blood clot might cause cerebral stroke and
even decease if the clot could not be dissolved within several hours after it
was formed. In order to carry out an efficient clinical treatment, there exist
several problems required to resolve. One of them is the measurement of
solubility of blood clots in vivo, which is very important for the doctor
to know the situation of the clot dissolution in an operation. In this paper, a
fundamental study, on how to assist the dissolution of the thrombus with a few
amount of thrombolytic agent and to measure the solubility of the thrombus
in-vivo during the operation, is presented. A mechanical micro stirrer for
dissolution of the thrombus is developed as a slight beam embedded with a
piezo-cell. Furthermore, an approach using the stirrer also as a sensor to
evaluate the solubility of blood clots in the operation is proposed. This idea
comes from that the solution state of the blood influences the mechanical
impedance of the stirrer, which can be measured with a high accuracy by
checking the electric impedance of the piezo-cell with the so-called
piezoelectric impedance based measuring technique. Both the performance of the
dissolution and the measurement of the solubility by the same stirrer are
investigated in detail and their validations are verified experimentally.
