KEEN | Spring 2019

Treatment of Acute Upper Gastrointestinal Clots Through Histotripsy

Acute upper gastrointestinal (GI)  bleeding results in 20,000 deaths annually in the United States. The issue with acute upper GI bleeding is locating and removing an excessive amount of blood clots obstructing the location and visualization of the wound. This problem results in invasive procedures and blood transfusions. We are proposing a device that utilizes a high-intensity focused ultrasound method called histotripsy. This device is composed of a focused transducer that emits HIFU at a frequency of 5MHz to induce cavitation to break blood clots in a controlled and localized manner. We collated this data and analyzed them using MATLAB and ANSYS.