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Updated: May 22, 2026
Ferric Chloride-Induced Arterial Thrombosis and Sample Collection for 3D Electron Microscopy Analysis
Published on: March 17, 2023
A concept of thrombolysis as a corrosion-erosion process verified by optical microscopy
1Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia EN-FIST Centre of Excellence, Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Objective:
Outcome of the thrombolytic treatment is dependent on biochemical reactions of the fibrinolytic system as well as on hemodynamic conditions. However, understanding of the interaction between these two processes is still deficient.
Methods:
Model blood clot thrombolysis in an artificial perfusion system was studied by stroboscopic optical microscopy. The obtained images were analyzed by particle-tracking software for clot size distributions of removed clot fragments, and for non-lysed blood clot areas as function of time. Based on the experimental results, a probabilistic phenomenological model of blood clot dissolution was developed, in which mechanical forces of streaming plasma are in balance with binding forces of blood cells to the remaining clot.
Results:
The clot dissolution rate and maximum size of removed clot fragments were increased with greater flow rate. A 3.3-fold flow rate increase resulted in a two-fold clot dissolution rate increase, while sizes of the removed fragments were in the range of single blood cells, up to thousand-cell clusters. Our phenomenological microscale model of clot dissolution suggests that thrombolysis is a corrosion-erosion-like process.
Conclusions:
The findings of this study provide a possible explanation for the origin of clot fragment formation in the blood clot dissolution process.
