Abstract
Intravascular near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) imaging offers a new approach for characterizing atherosclerotic plaque, but random catheter positioning within the vessel lumen results in variable light attenuation and can yield inaccurate measurements. We hypothesized that NIRF measurements could be corrected for variable light attenuation through blood by tracking the location of the NIRF catheter with intravascular ultrasound (IVUS). In this study, a combined NIRF-IVUS catheter was designed to acquire coregistered NIRF and IVUS data, an automated image processing algorithm was developed to measure catheter-to-vessel wall distances, and depth-dependent attenuation of the fluorescent signal was corrected by an analytical light propagation model. Performance of the catheter sensing distance correction method was evaluated in coronary artery phantoms and ex vivo arteries. The correction method produced NIRF estimates of fluorophore concentrations, in coronary artery phantoms, with an average root mean square error of 17.5%. In addition, the correction method resulted in a statistically significant improvement in correlation between spatially resolved NIRF measurements and known fluorophore spatial distributions in ex vivo arteries (from r = 0.24 to 0.69, p < 0.01, n = 6). This work demonstrates that catheter-to-vessel wall distances, measured from IVUS images, can be employed to compensate for inaccuracies caused by variable intravascular NIRF sensing distances.
Highlights
Acute coronary events are primarily caused by thrombogenesis following vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque rupture and are the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in the United States.[1]
It is increasingly probable that combined information on anatomical and physiological parameters is required to determine whether a specific lesion is susceptible to rupture, and several of these parameters may be evaluated through catheter-based intravascular imaging approaches.[3,4,5,6]
The average correlation coefficient between corrected near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) and fluorescence microscopy measurements was 0.69 with a 95% confidence interval between 0.67 and 0.72. These results demonstrate that correcting NIRF measurements for variable catheter-to-vessel wall sensing distances resulted in a statistically significant improvement (p < 0.01, n 1⁄4 6) in the correlation between NIRF-Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and fluorescence microscopy estimates of local fluorescence intensities in ex vivo arteries
Summary
Acute coronary events are primarily caused by thrombogenesis following vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque rupture and are the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in the United States.[1]. While these approaches have demonstrated potential for systematically characterizing the structural components of atherosclerotic plaque, they often fail to provide insight into physiological and biochemical processes that may be precursors
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