Project Overview

Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a devastating form of 10-15% of stroke, affecting over 100,000 people in the USA each year. Damage from mechanical effects of the blood clot in the brain is followed by damage due to exposure to decaying blood products and edema. Several therapies have shown the capability to reduce the clot volume and thus reduce the overall neurological damage. Greater clot reduction correlates with reduced brain edema and more importantly with a reduction in long term neurological deficits. Currently the extent of clot reduction and thus treatment benefits vary significantly between patients due to lack of monitoring technology to guide clot removal while maintaining a safety profile against re-hemorrhage.

In current practice, a catheter is placed into the deep end of the clot using stereotactic guidance from a previously acquired CT image. rtPA is administered in moderate doses (1 ml) approximately every 8 hours over 1-3 days and the portion of the clot that dissolves is allowed to drain. . Monitoring would provide the confidence needed to shorten the treatment duration, and increase the amount of clot removed in many victims.
We have a vision for how to guide the treatment with MRI, which can see the clot components and rtPA. We need to create a brain gel model with a blood pocket. As we administer the clot-buster and drain the lysed clot, we need the "brain" to compress upon the smaller clot.

Team Picture

Contact Information

Team Members

• Michael McGovern - Team Leader
• Katherine Peterson - Communicator
• Jin Hwang - BSAC & BPAG
• Zachary Burmeister - BWIG

Advisor and Client

• Prof. Paul Thompson - Advisor
• Prof. Walter Block - Client

Related Projects

• Spring 2017: Intracranial hemorrhage model for image guided treatment
• Fall 2016: Intracranial hemorrhage model for image guided treatment