Endovascular OCT offers a promising high-resolution 3D imaging technique for assessing vulnerable carotid atherosclerotic plaques compared to traditional noninvasive modalities.
Endovascular OCT may aid carotid plaque assessment; leaves open need for prospective validation before any practice change.
As stroke is one of the leading causes of death and long-term morbidity worldwide, the research community has studied cardiac embolic sources, as well as vessel wall pathologies. For the latter, attention has been focused on defining morphologic tissue features associated with catastrophic events stemming from the carotid artery. Multiple noninvasive imaging modalities are currently being used to image and classify carotid atherosclerotic plaques, such as MR imaging, CT, and sonography, in an effort to provide clinically relevant predictive metrics for use in patient risk stratification and to define appropriate treatment options. This article compares and contrasts these existing clinical imaging modalities along with discussion of a new endovascular technique originally developed for cardiology, OCT, with which 3D comprehensive high-resolution images of the arterial wall can be acquired.
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Standish et al. (2012) studied this question.
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