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Innovations in Microscopic Imaging of Atherosclerosis and Valvular Disease

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Cardiovascular Imaging

Abstract

Calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) is still an unsolved medical problem, because the pathogenesis of CAVD is poorly understood and early calcification is hard to identify. The lack of high-resolution imaging tools to study early stage disease further hampers the search for therapeutic targets.

Micro-optical coherence tomography (μOCT), which is a new form of OCT, is the highest-resolution cross-sectional OCT technology available today with 1 μm resolution. We used μOCT to visualize detailed cellular and subcellular structure associated with early calcific changes in diseased human and murine aortic valves. The results suggest that μOCT imaging has the potential to provide new insights into underlying mechanisms of CAVD.

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Acknowledgment

This work was funded in part by NIH R01HL076398 and R01HL114805 (to EA).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

    Yu Nomura, Kengyeh K. Chu, Joseph A. Gardecki, Chen-hsin Sun, Linbo Liu & Eduardo Martinez-Martinez

  2. Department of Pathology and Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, BHX604A, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

    Guillermo J. Tearney MD, PhD

  3. Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Elena Aikawa MD

Authors
  1. Yu Nomura
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  2. Kengyeh K. Chu
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  3. Joseph A. Gardecki
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  4. Chen-hsin Sun
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  5. Linbo Liu
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  6. Eduardo Martinez-Martinez
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  7. Elena Aikawa MD
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  8. Guillermo J. Tearney MD, PhD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Guillermo J. Tearney MD, PhD .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Cardiovascular Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    Elena Aikawa

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Disclosures

Drs. Tearney, Gardecki, Liu, and Chu have applied for patents on the μOCT technology. Dr. Tearney is a consultant for and receives sponsored research funding from Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology.

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© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Nomura, Y. et al. (2015). Innovations in Microscopic Imaging of Atherosclerosis and Valvular Disease. In: Aikawa, E. (eds) Cardiovascular Imaging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09268-3_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09268-3_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-09267-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-09268-3

  • eBook Packages: MedicineMedicine (R0)

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