Expansion of the Clinical Application of Optical Coherence Tomography to Percutaneous Coronary Intervention and Assessment of the Instability of Coronary Atherosclerosis

A Mechanical Approach for Smooth Surface Fitting to Delineate Vessel Walls in Optical Coherence Tomography Images

“…However, the use of light results in relatively low penetration depth (1-2.5 mm [5]) with strong dependence on tissue optical properties, allowing visual identification of vessel outer border (intima-or plaque-media interface) only in healthy or minimally-diseased vessel segments [6]. Despite this shortcoming, OCT has been proven to be not just feasible and safe for clinical use [7], [8], but has also demonstrated the capacity to offer insights and detailed information not offered by other imaging modalities [8]- [10]. OCT can diagnose CAD [6], characterize the majority of plaque types with excellent reproducibility [11], [12], guide coronary interventions such as stent deployment [7], and assess stents after deployment [11], [13].…”