Blood Coagulation Monitoring and Thrombus Formulation Assessment based on Bioimpedance Spectroscopy

Thrombotic diseases are becoming an increasingly death threat to contemporary humans. There lacks effective realtime and continuous methodology to monitor the thrombus development clinically. In this work, blood impedance is theoretically modelled and the coagulation process is measured in vitro via bioimpedance, which proves its potential monitoring to thrombus formulation. The time-varying spectroscopy drafting from blood bioimpedance is utilized as the characteristic signal to indicate the blood coagulation status. The two-phase model illustrates the mechanism that red blood cells and plasma build up the bioimpedance of whole blood. The distribution change of red blood cells during blood coagulation and thrombosis affects the bioelectrical impedance signal as the characterization of monitoring. It is demonstrated in the vitro experiment that bioimpedance spectrum is available to characterize various stages of the coagulation process. A positive sensitivity of the signal feature is presented in the early stage of thrombogenesis. The entire blood clotting process is tracked and evaluated by the characteristic band of the whole blood bioimpedance spectrum, which proves the basis to monitor, evaluate and predict the thrombotic diseases. This study confirms the feasibility to early diagnosis of carotid thrombosis and treatment assessment of thrombolytic therapy through a non-invasive and online monitoring technology.