Printed brain-vessel models with fake clots for stroke thrombectomy practice
TL;DR Clotbench makes 3D-printed copies of brain arteries, fitted with pumps and synthetic clots, so stroke teams can rehearse clot removal before they do it on a patient. Hospitals, training courses and catheter makers pay. It works because India is adding thrombectomy centres faster than it's training confident operators.
Thrombectomy means pulling a clot out of a brain artery through a catheter, and it's the treatment that saves function after a large stroke. India is short of it. A 2025 mapping study counted 361 centres able to do it, or 0.26 per million people, and found only 20.6% of Indians live within an hour of one[1].
In the national stroke-quality registry, thrombectomy was done in just 6.5% of ischaemic strokes[2], even though about one in five early arrivals at a large academic centre were eligible[3]. New centres need operators and teams who have done plenty of cases. Today they mostly learn on live patients, under time pressure, which is nobody's idea of a good classroom.
What it does, in regulatory terms: training and bench-testing models only. Clotbench models are never used on or in a patient, so they should sit outside the Medical Devices Rules. If you later print a named patient's vessels to plan their procedure then take regulatory advice first[4].
The product is a set of printed, flexible neurovascular cartridges built from anonymised CT angiograms, a pump that pushes blood-like fluid through them and synthetic clots in several stiffnesses. A cath lab can run a session under real fluoroscopy and time each pass. Research groups have already used printed vessel copies this way to test how clot angle affects success[5].
The seed proposed wireless microrobots that swim to the clot. That work is still at the computer-simulation stage[6], decades away from an Indian ward. So we kept the goal of better neurovascular procedures and moved to the part a startup can sell now. The same benches can later test any catheter or microrobot that someone does bring to India.
The buyers are neuro-interventional and interventional radiology departments starting or growing a stroke programme, stroke-training courses and society workshops, and device companies that run hands-on sessions for doctors. Trainees use it, while heads of department and medical-education budgets pay. There's no public Indian price list for these models, so price discovery is part of validation.
Stroke care is finally being organised and measured. The national registry published its first quality dataset in 2025[2], and the 2025 access study laid out how few people reach a thrombectomy centre in time[1]. As private chains and medical colleges open centres, each one needs a team that can perform on day one.
There's no public figure for India's neurovascular simulation market. The narrowest number is the base of possible buyers - 361 thrombectomy-capable centres in 2021[1]. A meta-analysis found that angiography simulator training shortened procedures by 2.63 minutes on average[7], which is the kind of result a buyer may pay for. Treat both as signals, not a sized market.
One French firm sells haptic stations, printed vessel cartridges and synthetic clot consumables, plus patient-specific models[8]. A Swiss maker sells more than 200 silicone vascular models and custom builds from customer files[9]. Both price in euros and ship from Europe. We found no Indian maker of neurovascular training models, which leaves room for a local supplier with rupee pricing and fast clot refills.
| Difficulty | Moderate (43/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹60–95 L |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The printing is solvable but getting the feel right is no easy task. Vessel walls have to flex like real arteries and clots have to behave like real ones under a stent retriever, or senior operators will write the model off in one session. Sales run through department heads and education budgets, which move slowly.
No sector licence applies to training models never used on patients, as far as we found. Patient-specific planning models are a different matter.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
The models are for training, not care. Don't let AI output from a patient's scan be used to plan their real procedure without regulatory advice.
Want to work out the AI layer for Clotbench? Talk to Yash →
I think it's worth a shot for a biomedical engineer with materials skills and a neuro-interventionist co-founder. It's not for anyone hoping to build microrobots on day one. First prove that five senior operators rate your clot behaviour as realistic and that one device company pays for a workshop kit.
About ₹60–95 L covers printers, materials testing, pumps and a small team. Getting clot feel right takes most of the early time.
Training models never used on patients should sit outside the Medical Devices Rules. Patient-specific planning models may not, so take regulatory advice first.
Yes, European makers already sell abroad. Check data protection law for the scans you use and whether planning models count as devices there.
The free Clotbench validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the rules checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for stroke teams and device makers, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Clotbench or something close to it? The make-or-break work is making clots and vessel walls that experienced operators accept as real, and I'm happy to help you plan how to test that cheaply. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.