Permeability of hyperosmotic agent in normal and atherosclerotic vascular tissues

Abstract

Noninvasivecardiovascular imaging could lead to the early detection and timelytreatment of complex atherosclerotic lesions responsible for major cardiovascular events.Recent investigations have suggested that optical coherence tomography (OCT) isan ideal diagnostic tool due to the high resolution thistechnology achieves in discriminating the different features of atherosclerotic lesionsbased on structural imaging. We explore the capability of OCTfor functional imaging of normal and atherosclerotic aortic tissues basedon time- and depth-resolved quantification of the permeability of biomoleculesthrough these tissues. The permeability coefficient of 20% aqueous solutionof glucose was found to be (6.80±0.18)×10−6 cm/s in normal aortasand (2.69±0.42)×10−5 cm/s in aortas with atherosclerotic disease. The results suggestthat this new OCT functional imaging method—the assessment of thepermeability coefficients of various physiologically neutral biomolecules in vascular tissues—couldassist in early diagnosing and detecting the different components ofatherosclerotic lesions. ©2008 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers