Optical coherence tomography attenuation imaging for lipid core detection

an ex-vivo validation study

Journal article (2017)

Authors

Ali S. Hussain Bristol Heart Institute
Stephen White University of Bristol
Simon Scoltock University of Bristol
Andreas Baumbach Bristol Heart Institute
A.F.W. van der Steen Erasmus MC,
E.S. Regar Erasmus MC
Thomas Johnson Bristol Heart Institute
G. van Soest Erasmus MC
Copyright: © 2017 Muthukaruppan Gnanadesigan, Ali S. Hussain, Stephen White, Simon Scoltock, Andreas Baumbach, A.F.W. van der Steen, E.S. Regar, Thomas W. Johnson, G. van Soest
DOI
help_outline
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10554-016-0968-z
Optical coherence tomography Attenuation Lipid core plaque
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

01-01-2017

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Abstract

Lipid-core atherosclerotic plaques are associated with disease progression, procedural complications, and cardiac events. Coronary plaque lipid can be quantified in optical coherence tomography (OCT) pullbacks by measurement of lipid arcs and lipid lengths; parameters frequently used in clinical research, but labor intensive and subjective to analyse. In this study, we investigated the ability of quantitative attenuation, derived from intravascular OCT, to detect plaque lipid. Lipid cores are associated with a high attenuation coefficient. We compared the index of plaque attenuation (IPA), a local quantitative measure of attenuation, to the manually measured lipid score (arc and length) on OCT images, and to the plaque characterization ex-vivo. We confirmed a correlation between the IPA and lipid scores (r2 > 0.7). Comparison to histology shows that high attenuation is associated with fibroatheroma, but also with macrophage presence. IPA is a robust, reproducible, and user-independent measure that facilitates quantification of coronary lipid, a potential tool in clinical research and in guiding percutaneous coronary intervention.