Morphological and biochemical imaging of coronary atherosclerotic plaques using optical coherence tomography and fluorescence lifetime imaging
We propose that a multimodality imaging approach combining high-resolution optical coherence tomography (OCT) with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) molecular imaging will allow a more accurate diagnosis of vulnerable plaque (VP).We have obtained consecutive OCT and FLIM images of two postmortem coronary arteries. In the first artery (left), the OCT images showed a homogeneous, signal-rich, thick upper layer that suggested a homogenous fibrotic plaque. The FLIM images indicated two biochemically distinct areas: region of interest (ROI)-1 resembled the fluorescence emission of collagen, while ROI-2 resembled the fluorescence emission of elastin. In the second artery (right), the OCT images ...
Read Full Article
Login to comment.