Blood flow contrast enhancement in optical coherence tomography using microbubbles: a phantom study

Homa Assadi; Valentin Demidov; Raffi Karshafian; Alexandre Douplik; I. Alex Vitkin

doi:10.1117/12.2211665

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4 March 2016 Blood flow contrast enhancement in optical coherence tomography using microbubbles: a phantom study

Homa Assadi, Valentin Demidov, Raffi Karshafian, Alexandre Douplik, I. Alex Vitkin

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Proceedings Volume 9715, Optical Diagnostics and Sensing XVI: Toward Point-of-Care Diagnostics; 97151F (2016) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2211665
Event: SPIE BiOS, 2016, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

In this study gas microbubbles are investigated as intravascular OCT contrast agents. Agar+Intralipid scattering tissue-like phantoms with two embedded microtubes were fabricated to model vascular blood flow. One was filled with human blood, and the other with a mixture of human blood and microbubbles. Swept-source structural and speckle variance OCT images, as well as speckle decorrelation times, were evaluated under both stationary and flow conditions. Faster decorrelation times and higher image contrast were detected in the presence of microbubbles in all experiments, and the effect was largest for speckle variance OCT ~2.3x greater contrast under flow conditions. The feasibility of utilizing microbubbles for tissue hemodynamic investigations and for microvasculature contrast enhancement in OCT angiography thus appears promising.

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Homa Assadi, Valentin Demidov, Raffi Karshafian, Alexandre Douplik, and I. Alex Vitkin "Blood flow contrast enhancement in optical coherence tomography using microbubbles: a phantom study", Proc. SPIE 9715, Optical Diagnostics and Sensing XVI: Toward Point-of-Care Diagnostics, 97151F (4 March 2016); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2211665

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