Objectives This study sought to evaluate adventitial vasa vasorum (VV) in vivo with novel imaging technique of optical coherence tomography (OCT). Methods To verify OCT methods for quantification of VV, we first studied 2 swine carotid arteries in a model of focal angiogenesis by autologous blood injection, and compared microchannel volume (MCV) by OCT and VV by m-CT, and counts of those. In OCT images, adventitial MC was identified as signal-voiding areas which were located within 1 mm from the lumen-intima border. After manually tracing microchannel areas and the boundaries of lumen-intima and media-adventitial in all slices, we reconstructed 3D ...

Background: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the feasibility of optical coherence tomography (OCT) for measurement of vessel area in coronary arteries with lipid-rich plaque as compared with intravascular ultrasound (IVUS). Methods and Results: We investigated 80 coronary artery segments with lipid-rich plaque on OCT and non-attenuated plaque on IVUS. According to the lipid arc on OCT, the plaques were classified into 4 groups: group 1, lipid arc ≤90°; group 2, 90°<lipid arc≤180°; group 3, 180°<lipid arc≤270°; group 4, lipid arc >270°. Vessel circular arcs that could not be identified due to OCT ...

Aims The long-term safety of second-generation everolimus-eluting stents (EESs) in ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) remains unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the late vascular response after stent implantation in STEMI between EES and bare-metal stent (BMS) by using optical coherence tomography (OCT). Methods and results A prospective OCT examination was performed in 102 patients at 10 months after stent implantation for treatment of STEMI. A total of 1253 frames with 12 772 struts in 61 EESs and 776 frames with 8594 struts in 41 BMSs were analysed. There were no significant differences in the percentage of ...

Intracoronary optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a new invasive imaging system which produces highresolution images of coronary arteries. Preliminary data suggests that the atherosclerotic disease can be detected from the intracoronary OCT images. However, manual assessment of the intracoronary OCT images is time-consuming and subjective. In this work, we present an automatic atherosclerotic disease detection system on intracoronary OCT images. In the system, a preprocessing scheme is first applied to remove speckle noise and artifacts caused by catheter. Intensity, Histograms of Oriented Gradients (HOG), and Local Binary Patterns (LBP) are then extracted to represent the OCT image. Finally a linear ...

Aim : Previous clinical trials have demonstrated the effectiveness of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) in preventing cardiovascular events. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of EPA treatment on the accumulation of coronary atherosclerotic plaque using optical coherence tomography (OCT). Methods : A total of 46 acute coronary syndrome (ACS) patients without dyslipidemia were divided into two groups: those who received 1,800 mg/day of EPA ( n =15) or the control group ( n =31). Serial OCT examinations were performed at baseline and after eight months of follow-up. The target for the OCT analysis was non-culprit plaque with a ...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a high-resolution intracoronary arterial imaging modality. We describe two patients who were admitted to undergo coronary angiography (CAG) and OCT for follow-up of Kawasaki disease (KD) with coronary artery aneurysms. OCT clearly demonstrated thrombus, stenosis, fibrotic intimal thickening with lamellar calcification and partial disappearance of the tunica media at the aneurysm site. In addition, focal calcification, intimal thickening and medial irregularity were observed even in regions of coronary arterial walls that appeared to be normal by CAG. OCT is useful for evaluating coronary arterial sequelae of KD.

Objective Although monocytes appear to be actively involved in the onset of acute coronary syndrome (ACS), they are heterogenous in human peripheral blood. How up-regulation of monocyte subsets leads to coronary plaque rupture followed by thrombus formation remains unclear. Recent studies have shown that P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1 (PSGL-1) is involved in monocyte activation in patients with thrombus formation. We therefore investigated the relationship between the expression of PSGL-1 on monocyte subsets and thrombus formation using frequency-domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT) in patients with ACS. Methods We enrolled a total of 100 individuals in this study: patients with acute myocardial infarction ...