A Novel Inversion Technique for Imaging Thrombus Volume in Microchannels Fusing Optical and Impedance Data

The aim of this paper is to present a novel inversion technique to measure the volume of thrombus induced under blood flow conditions in a lab-on-a-chip device. The device is composed by a microscope slide where gold electrodes are sputtered and by a polydimethylsiloxane microchannel placed on the top of the slide. A thrombogenic substance is placed on the slide in such a way that hemostasis is induced when whole blood flows in the microchannel. The novel idea behind the inversion technique is to fuse optical and electrical impedance data to obtain a quasi-real-time reconstruction of thrombus volume. This is not possible with present state-of-the-art optical imaging based on confocal microscopy, which provides the thrombus volume estimation only at the end of the thrombus formation.