Imaging the subcellular structure of human coronary atherosclerosis using micro–optical coherence tomography

• Published in: Nature medicine Vol. 17; no. 8; pp. 1010 - 1014
• Main Authors: Liu, Linbo, Gardecki, Joseph A, Nadkarni, Seemantini K, Toussaint, Jimmy D, Yagi, Yukako, Bouma, Brett E, Tearney, Guillermo J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Nature Publishing Group US 01.08.2011; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/1647/245/2226; 692/699/75/593/15; 692/700/139; Animals; Atherosclerosis; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Cadavers; Calcium; Cancer Research; Cardiovascular disease; Care and treatment; Cell Adhesion; Cholesterol; Coronary Artery Disease - pathology; Coronary heart disease; Coronary vessels; Coronary Vessels - ultrastructure; Diagnosis; Electron microscopy; Endothelium; Histology; Histopathology; Hospitals; Humans; Infectious Diseases; Investigations; Leukocytes; Leukocytes - ultrastructure; Metabolic Diseases; Molecular Medicine; Morphology; Neurosciences; Scanning electron microscopy; Stents; Swine; technical-report; Thromboembolism; Thrombosis; Tomography; Tomography, Optical Coherence - methods; United States; United States > US; Massachusetts
• ISSN: 1078-8956; 1546-170X
• DOI: 10.1038/nm.2409

Progress in understanding coronary artery disease has been hampered by the inability of current approaches to interrogate the human coronary wall at cellular-level resolution. Here, Liu and colleagues introduce a second-generation form of OCT, called ↘OCT, that provides three-dimensional images of human coronary atherosclerosis at an axial resolution of only 1 ↘m—an order of magnitude greater than that provided by standard OCT systems. Progress in understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of coronary artery disease (CAD) has been hindered by our inability to observe cells and extracellular components associated with human coronary atherosclerosis in situ . The current standards for microstructural investigation, histology and electron microscopy are destructive and prone to artifacts. The highest-resolution intracoronary imaging modality, optical coherence tomography (OCT), has a resolution of ∼10 μm, which is too coarse for visualizing most cells. Here we report a new form of OCT, termed micro–optical coherence tomography (μOCT), whose resolution is improved by an order of magnitude. We show that μOCT images of cadaver coronary arteries provide clear pictures of cellular and subcellular features associated with atherogenesis, thrombosis and responses to interventional therapy. These results suggest that μOCT can complement existing diagnostic techniques for investigating atherosclerotic specimens, and that μOCT may eventually become a useful tool for cellular and subcellular characterization of the human coronary wall in vivo .