title: Assessment of blood vessel mimics with optical coherence tomography.
abstract: Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an imaging modality that enables assessment of tissue structural characteristics. Studies have indicated that OCT is a useful method to assess both blood vessel morphology and the response of a vessel to a deployed stent. We evaluated the ability of OCT to visualize the cellular lining of a tissue-engineered blood vessel mimic (BVM) and the response of this lining to a bare metal stent. We develop a side-firing endoscope that obtains intraluminal, longitudinal scans within the sterile bioreactor environment, enabling time-serial assessment. Seventeen BVMs are imaged with the endoscopic OCT system. The BVMs are then evaluated via fluorescence microscopy and/or standard histologic techniques. We determine that (1) the OCT endoscope can be repeatedly inserted without visible damage to the BVM cellular lining, (2) OCT provides a precise measure of cellular lining thickness with good correlation to measurements obtained from histological sections, and (3) OCT is capable of monitoring the accumulation of cellular material in response to a metallic stent. Our studies indicate that OCT is a useful technique for monitoring the BVM cellular lining, and that OCT may facilitate the use of BVMs for early stage device assessment.
authors.affiliation: The University of Arizona, College of Optical Sciences, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA.
authors.forename: Garret T
authors.initials: GT
authors.lastname: Bonnema
authors.forename: Kristen O
authors.initials: KO
authors.lastname: Cardinal
authors.forename: James B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: McNally
authors.forename: Stuart K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.forename: Jennifer K
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Barton
mesh_terms: D040761:Biomimetic Materials; D001807:Blood Vessel Prosthesis; D001808:Blood Vessels / Q000166:cytology*; D019723:Endoscopes; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis / Q000295:instrumentation; D006801:Humans; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D015607:Stents; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000295:instrumentation*; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D014656:Vascular Surgical Procedures / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods