Strokes may occur as a result of irregular heart rhythms, including atrial fibrillation. Clots in the heart can become dislodged and flow to the brain, potentially causing disabling conditions.
These clots are typically detected with transesophageal ultrasound, which is a procedure that requires patients to be sedated as well as the insertion of a large tube into their throats.
Blood Clots Can Be Detected Noninvasively With Non-Invasive Technique
In most cases, it is seen that blood clots can lead to a fatal medical condition in most cases, and hence it has been much important for the experts to carry out various studies with the help of which the clotting of blood can be avoided.
A group of experts had been working on this aspect to find a technique that can help detect the possibility of blood clotting and lead to countermeasures for the same.
A new targeted contrast agent has been developed and tested at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to detect and image these blood clots noninvasively. An article published in JACC:
Using the new agent, blood clots can be detected everywhere in the body, not just the heart, and can be compared to bright stars in the night sky, says senior author and MGH physician David Sosnovik, MD, FACC.
The agent is injected into a small peripheral vein, and it circulates throughout the human body as it searches for clots. It’s similar to doing a smart search with a search engine like Google, where the search terms guide the search.
This medication is quickly excreted from the body if no clots are found. Still, if a clot is found and the medication binds to it, it can be detected with positron emission tomography, a diagnostic imaging technique.
Sosnovik and his team first evaluated the agent on eight healthy volunteers. In the initial stages, the agent showed a degree of stability and was cleared from tissues within several hours, indicating its safety.
At that time, patients with atrial fibrillation, some with or without heart clots, were given the medication. No bright signals were found in imaging tests of the heart for patients without clots.
Despite the fact that much more work and much more research need to be done before this can become routine clinical practice, Sosnovik sees this study as an important milestone. This molecularly targeted or smart agent can detect blood clots anywhere in the body, so that is a very important feature.
A multidisciplinary team approached this study’s success, including the MGH Institute for Innovation in Imaging’s head, Peter Caravan, Ph.D., and its agent, who played crucial roles. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, supported the team of chemists and biologists who worked on the probe for over a year. Fibrin can be targeted in a specific way using a PET probe. A PET probe could have significant health benefits.”
The study was largely led by CiprianCatana, MD, Ph.D., director of the MartinosCenter for Biomedical Imaging at MGH. In their respective papers, Izquierdo-Garcia and Catana emphasize the innovative nature of the imaging platform that was used in the study.
It is one of the first studies to explore how integrated PET-MRI scanners can improve performance and provide synergies and advantages to patients,” Izquierdo-Garcia says.
The MartinosCenter for Biomedical Imaging is a great place to work, and I’m delighted to be part of interdisciplinary research teams that develop and apply cutting-edge imaging techniques,” says Dr. Catana. It was our site that was the first in the U.S. to install a PET-MRI scanner that revolutionized the field and helped bring this technology to the clinic.”
