Aims: Thrombus aspiration is useful in improving myocardial reperfusion in comparison to conventional percutaneous coronary intervention in patients with acute myocardial infarction. Nonetheless, assessment of thrombus aspiration efficacy is lacking. Aim of this study was to quantify by frequency domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) the amount of thrombus removal in patients with acute coronary syndromes undergoing manual thrombus aspiration, correlating it with the actual size of the retrieved material. Methods: Twenty-five consecutive patients with acute coronary syndrome were enrolled. OCT assessment of thrombotic lesions was performed before and after thrombus aspiration and repeated after stent deployment. OCT thrombus assessment was ...

In published post-mortem pathological studies, more than two-thirds of acute coronary events are associated with the rupture of lipid-rich, voluminous, and outwardly remodelled plaques covered by attenuated and inflamed fibrous caps in the proximal part of coronary arteries. Superficial erosion of the plaques is responsible for most of the remaining events; the eroded plaques usually do not demonstrate much lipid burden, do not have thin fibrous caps, are not positively remodelled, and are not critically occlusive. Both noninvasive and invasive imaging studies have been performed to clinically define the plaque characteristics in acute coronary syndromes in an attempt to identify ...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a light-based intracoronary imaging modality that provides high-resolution cross-sectional images of the luminal and plaque morphology. Currently, the segmentation of OCT images and identification of the composition of plaque are mainly performed manually by expert observers. However, this process is laborious and time consuming and its accuracy relies on the expertise of the observer. To address these limitations, we present a methodology that is able to process the OCT data in a fully automated fashion. The proposed methodology is able to detect the lumen borders in the OCT frames, identify the plaque region, and detect ...

Aims: Subacute, late, and very late stent thrombosis (ST) may occur after stent implantation, but they are characterised by different underlying pathophysiological mechanisms. We sought to appraise differences between subacute and late/very late ST at the thrombus site by optical coherence tomography (OCT). The Mechanism Of Stent Thrombosis (MOST) study was a prospective multicentre non-randomised registry which enrolled six subacute ST and six controls (subacute ST study), and 17 late/very late ST and 17 controls (late/very late ST study). Methods and results: Patients with subacute ST had a minimum stent area at the thrombus site of 2 ...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is the current state-of-the-art intracoronary imaging modality that allows visualization of detailed morphological characteristics of both atherosclerotic plaque and stent. So far, three expert review documents have been released for standardization of OCT image analysis. In the real world, a variety of definitions are being used by different groups and by different core laboratories to analyze OCT findings because of different clinical/procedural contexts in which OCT research has been carried out. This comprehensive overview is aimed to summarize different applicable definitions used by different research groups in plaque and stent analysis using OCT. In addition ...

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is a new invasive technology for performing high-resolution cross-sectional imaging of the coronary arteries. In OCT images only Calcified plaque (CA) components can be accurately depicted as light penetrates hard tissue. In this work we present an automated method for detecting CA in OCT images. The method is fully automated as no user intervention is needed and includes three steps. In the first step the region between the lumen and the maximum penetration depth of OCT from the lumen border is determined. In the second step the region is classified into 3 clusters using the K-means ...

Fractional flow reserve (FFR) is the gold standard in the assessment of severity of the coronary stenosis. The aim of the study was to compare optical coherence tomography (OCT) obtained intermediate coronary lesions lumen areas measurements with FFR assessments, with the goal to develop an OCT threshold to identify significant coronary stenosis. 48 patients (mean age 65 ± 10 years) was enrolled for the study. Within this population, 71 intermediate coronary lesions were investigated using both FFR and OCT. High dose bolus of Adenosine (120 μg) was used to obtain coronary hyperemia. OCT imaging was performed using non-occlusive technique to assess ...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is the current state-of-the-art intravascular imaging technique which so far has been mainly used for research purpose. The clinical impact of an OCT-guided percutaneous coronary intervention is a field of controversy, although recent non randomized data has shown its potential clinical benefit. Many features that are clearly visualized by OCT are missed by both angiography and other intravascular imaging techniques due to their limited resolution. On the contrary, OCT allows visualization of detailed morphological characteristics of both atherosclerotic plaque and stent. This may translate in an improved clinical outcome of OCT-guided procedures. This article reviews the ...