2013 Volume 33 Issue 10 Pages 17-24
The emergence of implantable artificial hearts have brought a better quality of life to heart patients, and has allowed them to leave the hospitals and return to their homes. However, detection of thrombosis in these prosthetic devices is a major challenge. In the present work, a tomographic visualization system has been tested for the possibility of real-time detection of thrombus by exploiting the electrical properties of the blood. The in-vitro experiments were conducted using bovine blood under static condition. The spatio-temporal change in conductivity was measured before, during and after the sedimentation of thrombus. When a thrombus passed through the sensor plane, rise in relative voltage was sensed in each electrode pair of the sensor. In the same time, space-averaged relative conductivity was low in the cross-section. The average conductivity of cross-section was reduced with the increase in size of the thrombus. The experiments showed the possibility of the use of electrical tomographic sensor to detect the thrombosis in real-time.
