Why Use OCT?

For more than three centuries, the microscope has been considered the ultimate tool to understand the origins of disease by examining tissue and microstructures in exquisite detail. While the technology contained within the microscope has evolved over time, enabling better resolution of smaller structures, one aspect has remained constant - material to be examined must be excised from the body and brought to the microscope.

New thinking concerning the origins of the world's two largest killers -- heart disease and cancer - expose the limitations of the current paradigm. Both diseases are thought to originate at the cellular level in the thin (20 - 200 micron) cellular layer covering the inner and outer surfaces of the body. Understanding these diseases on the microscopic level on an in vivo basis could lead to better diagnosis, earlier more precise treatments and development of novel therapies to help eradicate these diseases

For years, scientists, physicians and technology developers have struggled to achieve microscopic images from within the body. These attempts have met with limited success due to two primary factors: the size of the apparatus being deployed and the resolution of the images being obtained. Attempts to obtain microscopic images using external methodologies: magnetic resonance, X-ray, ultrasound, and nuclear imaging, have met with similar fates.

OCT imaging has the potential to improve current cardiovascular therapies such as stenting and balloon angioplasty, by providing vascular images in real time to guide stent placement and balloon inflation. Given its small size, the OCT imaging guidewire could be integrated into an existing therapeutic catheter or deployed alongside during a procedure.

New cardiac research indicates that unstable plaques - arterial lesions that do not constrict the blood vessel but rather burst releasing a bolus of lipids into the blood stream - may be responsible for up to 70 percent of all heart attacks. OCT has the potential to clearly identify plaques and help differentiate unstable plaques from stable plaques.

In addition to providing exquisite morphological detail, LightLab is incorporating other capabilities of OCT such as spectroscopic imaging, polarization imaging and Doppler to provide further information regarding tissue composition and flow.

Cancer
Detection

It is estimated that more than 85 percent of all cancers originate in the epithelium, the thin (20-200 micron) cellular layer covering the inner and outer surfaces of the body. Excisional biopsy, removing tissue from the body and examining it under a microscope, is the gold standard for cancer diagnosis. However, many biopsies are done on a hit or miss basis, small pieces of tissue are excised at random and dissected to check for cancerous cells.

OCT has the potential to greatly improve conventional biopsy by more precisely identifying the areas to be excised based on images of the epithelial layers, reducing the number of biopsies and making earlier and more accurate diagnosis possible. As the technology matures, it may be possible to perform biopsies using OCT imaging alone, making possible point of care biopsy.