title: Feasibility of the assessment of cholesterol crystals in human macrophages using micro optical coherence tomography.
abstract: The presence of cholesterol crystals is a hallmark of atherosclerosis, but until recently, such crystals have been considered to be passive components of necrotic plaque cores. Recent studies have demonstrated that phagocytosis of cholesterol crystals by macrophages may actively precipitate plaque progression via an inflammatory pathway, emphasizing the need for methods to study the interaction between macrophages and crystalline cholesterol. In this study, we demonstrate the feasibility of detecting cholesterol in macrophages in situ using Micro-Optical Coherence Tomography (µOCT), an imaging modality we have recently developed with 1-µm resolution. Macrophages containing cholesterol crystals frequently demonstrated highly scattering constituents in their cytoplasm on µOCT imaging, and µOCT was able to evaluate cholesterol crystals in cultured macrophage cells. Our results suggest that µOCT may be useful for the detection and characterization of inflammatory activity associated with cholesterol crystals in the coronary artery.
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School and Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Manabu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kashiwagi
authors.affiliation: School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering and School of Chemical & Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Linbo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School and Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Kengyeh K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School and Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Chen-Hsin
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School and Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Atsushi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School and Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Joseph A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Gardecki
authors.affiliation: Harvard Medical School and Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America; Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America; Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
authors.forename: Guillermo J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Tearney
mesh_terms: D002478:Cells, Cultured; D002784:Cholesterol / Q000032:analysis*; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000175:diagnosis; D003331:Coronary Vessels / Q000473:pathology; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D008264:Macrophages / Q000473:pathology*; D058226:Plaque, Atherosclerotic / Q000175:diagnosis; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D002784:Cholesterol