Development of a blood vessel model with ultrasound sensors to quantify intravascular treatment skills

Intravascular surgery using catheters, such as coil embolization and stent placement, is a minimally invasive treatment. However, doctors need to be skillful to perform precise intravascular surgery. It is expected that displacement of the blood vessel wall caused by unexperienced doctor's manipulation of a guidewire and a catheter is relatively larger and more frequent than that of experienced skillful doctor's. Although several s intravascular surgery simulators have been developed to obtain the intravascular treatment skills, they cannot evaluate a quantitative difference of skills between unexperienced doctors and experienced skillful doctors. In this study, ultrasound micro sensors mounted on flexible substrates have been fabricated for installing in the blood vessel model locally. Three sensors were located near the blood vessel model and this model was filled with 5-wt% poly vinyl alcohol-hydrogel (PVA-H). This model is useful to measure displacement of the blood vessel wall of the model when the catheter contacts and pushes the blood vessel wall from inside. When the catheter contacted, displacement of blood vessel wall was measured about 150 μm by a fabricated ultrasound sensor. It is expected that this model is useful to evaluate skillfulness of intravascular doctor's technique and effectiveness of training.