The annual IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposiums (IUS 2020) was recently held online on September 7-11, 2020 with more than 1900 attendees from all over the world. Bohua Zhang, an MAE Ph.D. student from Prof. Xiaoning Jiang’s group, won the student paper competition award. The paper titled “Laser Sensor Guided Intravascular Catheter with Ring Type Stack Transducer for Sonothrombolysis” was authored by Bohua Zhang (NCSU), Huaiyu Wu (NCSU), Leela Goel (UNC & NCSU), and Xiaoning Jiang (NCSU). There were 18 papers from 5 topic groups that were selected as finalists. Bohua is the only winner from group 5 (Transducers and Transducer Materials).

Abstract

Thrombosis diseases have become a leading cause of mortality worldwide. Current treatment methods such as thrombolytic drugs or mechanical thrombectomy for effective removal or dissolution of large blood clots often suffer from a long treatment time and potential hemorrhage. Moreover, it is difficult to detect the clot position during the treatment. Here we report the development of a novel sonothrombolysis catheter device that incorporates a ring-type stack transducer and optical fiber-based laser sensor for clot detection and treatment. The developed transducer has a center frequency at 340
kHz and peak negative pressure (PNP) at 1.87 MPa with 120 Vpp input voltage, which is high enough for triggering cavitation of the agents. The measured beam profile indicates a natural beam focus at 2.8 mm from the transducer. The in vitro MBs and NDs-mediated sonothrombolysis tests showed about two-fold significantly improved lysis rate for both unretracted and retracted clot compare to the control group.