Reproducibility of coronary Fourier domain optical coherence tomography: quantitative analysis of in vivo stented coronary arteries using three different software packages.
OBJECTIVE
Fourier domain optical coherence tomography (FD OCT) enables imaging of long coronary artery segments within few seconds, employing high data acquisitions, speed and fast automated catheter pullback. However, the reproducibility of these high-speed pullbacks in the clinical situation is unknown. We tested the reproducibility of in vivo, intracoronary FD OCT and assessed the influence of different computer-assisted algorithms on quantitative analysis.


RESULTS
In patients undergoing elective coronary stenting, two repeated FD OCT pullbacks (20 mm/sec), were acquired. Lumen area (LA) and stent area (SA) were measured at 1 mm longitudinal intervals (n=18 pullbacks, n=326 frames). Inter-study variability in terms of absolute difference of mean LA, mean SA and minimum LA was very low (-0.06±0.28 mm2, -0.05±0.29 mm2 and -0.11±0.33 mm2 in software 1) Sources of variability were incomplete visualisation of the vessel circumference, ambiguous luminal borders and drift of internal catheter calibration (Z-offset). Inter-software variability for LA and SA was low (R2=0.98 ~ 1.00, p<0.01, respectively).


CONCLUSIONS
FD OCT shows excellent reproducibility for consecutive pullbacks and represents a reliable tool for the in vivo assessment of stented coronaries. Computer-assisted quantitative analysis of FD OCT may be a valuable tool for future studies.
Okamura
Takayuki
T
Thoraxcenter, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Gonzalo
Nieves
N
Gutiérrez-Chico
Juan Luis
JL
Serruys
Patrick W
PW
Bruining
Nico
N
de Winter
Sebastiaan
S
Dijkstra
Jouke
J
Commossaris
Koen H
KH
van Geuns
Robert-Jan
RJ
van Soest
Gijs
G
Ligthart
Jurgen
J
Regar
Evelyn
E
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000473:pathology*; D003331:Coronary Vessels / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D005583:Fourier Analysis; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000379:methods