Abstract
Current clinical intravascular optical coherence tomography (IV-OCT) imaging systems have limited in-vivo flow imaging capability because of non-uniform catheter rotation and inadequate A-line scan density. Thus any flow-localisation method that seeks to identify sites of variation within the OCT image data-sets, whether that is in amplitude or phase, produces non-representative correlation (or variance) maps. In this study, both mean and the variation within a set of cross-correlation maps, for static OCT imaging was used to differentiate flow from nonflow regions. Variation was quantified by use of standard deviation. The advantage of this approach is its ability to image flow, even in the presence of motion artifacts. The ability of this technique to suppress noise and capture flow maps was demonstrated by imaging microflow in an ex-vivo porcine coronary artery model, by nailfold capillary imaging and in-vivo microvessel imaging from within the human coronary sinus.
Highlights
Intravascular optical coherence tomography (IV-OCT) provides high spatial resolution, in-vivo images of coronary arteries and is widely used for atherosclerotic plaque characterization [1,2]
Available clinical IV-OCT systems have been applied for imaging plaque associated microvessels arising from the coronary lumen which appear as a signal void during coronary blood clearance [4]
The undesired effects of the catheter Non-Uniform Rotation Distortion (NURD) on OCT images are readily observed in clinical IV-OCT zero pullback datasets
Summary
Intravascular optical coherence tomography (IV-OCT) provides high spatial resolution, in-vivo images of coronary arteries and is widely used for atherosclerotic plaque characterization [1,2]. Available clinical IV-OCT systems have been applied for imaging plaque associated microvessels arising from the coronary lumen which appear as a signal void during coronary blood clearance [4]. The mechanical rotation of both clinical and research-grade OCT catheters introduces a Non-Uniform Rotation Distortion (NURD) in the OCT images [5]. This type of distortion causes a random shift in A-line scanning position, resulting in image distortion [5]. Current commercial clinical IV-OCT systems allow only limited variability in the scanning protocol. Over sampling of A-lines in the radial and pullback direction is not possible with the current clinical systems
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