Polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography for endoscopic imaging in bronchial thermoplasty treated asthma patients

Abstract

Asthma is a chronic inflammatory disease associated with thickening of the airway smooth muscle (ASM). Currently, there is no imaging modality available to assess ASM mass in vivo, other than invasive biopsies. Polarization Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography (PS-OCT) might enable minimally invasive in vivo quantification of ASM mass, by providing birefringent tissue-specific contrast. We performed in vivo PS-OCT in three asthma patients who underwent bronchial thermoplasty (BT), an endoscopic treatment which induces ASM reduction. We found an excellent correlation between ASM content in PS-OCT images and biopsies. Moreover, PS-OCT was able to detect a reduction in the ASM content after BT.