Thrombus Growth and Adhesion to Tube Wall

Bench testing is key to the safety and efficacy of medical devices. Models must be extraordinarily similar to the anatomy of the human body to generate valid data before devices can be tested on humans.

This project demonstrates a more realistic model of thrombus adhesion to blood vessels in the human body. The design encompasses multiple components to represent an adhered thrombus, including various sizes of tubing, grooving patterns on the interior wall of the tubing, and collagen coating on the interior tubular interface.

Specifically, the team used three tubing sizes to represent different functions of blood vessels ranging in diameter from 3 millimeters to 10 millimeters. The interior wall of the tubing was scored and coated with a collagen solution to increase thrombus adhesion. The components designed for bench testing closely modeled actual human blood vessels.