Methods for understanding shear induced thrombus growth

The formation of blood clots is a key process in preventing major blood loss. Novel techniques are presented that allow for both the quantitative and qualitative analysis of shear dependent thrombus formation in real-time. Techniques that allow for scanned real-time images to be time corrected and reconstructed into a three-dimensional (3D) surface are demonstrated. As past work has demonstrated platelet activation and the subsequent thrombus growth is highly shear sensitive (Nesbitt, 2009). In order to attain better understanding to the underlying mechanisms driving thrombus formation the novel techniques presented allow for the shear history of individual platelets to be correlated with factors such as overall thrombus growth. A combination of the methods presented provides a powerful tool towards analysing thrombus growth in a highly temporal and spatially accurate manner.