When a patient has a blood clot, they are often prescribed blood-thinning drugs to clear it out. These drugs, however, do not guarantee success.

In 2017, scientists at North Carolina State University described a newly-created technology that can be inserted into a vein to clear blood clots by directing low-frequency ultrasound at it. The advantage of the device is that these ultrasound pulses don’t harm the surrounding blood vessels.

Building upon their work, the researchers have now added a new tool to the technique. As described in New Atlas, the researchers are using nanodroplets made up of lipid spheres filled with liquid perfluorocarbons (PFCs). These nanodroplets are small enough to penetrate blood clots – even dense ones – and once there they can begin to destroy the clot from the inside out.

The PFCs in them have very low boiling points, which means that the liquid turns into a gas when they’re hit by the ultrasound waves, forming microscopic bubbles. With continued ultrasonic pulses, these microbubbles start swinging back and forth rapidly, destroying the structure of the blood clot from within.

Beyond this, it also helps anti-clotting drugs get deeper inside to do their work. In lab tests thus far, the technology seems promising.

“We found that the use of nanodroplets, ultrasound, and drug treatment was the most effective, decreasing the size of the clot by 40 percent, plus or minus nine percent,” says Xiaoning Jiang, the corresponding author of the study.

Although more research must be done before the technique can be widely used, the ultrasound technology holds promise for providing a better way to bust up tough blood clots.