Optical coherence tomography in pulmonary medicine

Abstract

Advances in pulmonary diagnostics and therapeutics offer a major potential for optical imaging applications both in clinical practice and research settings. Complexities of pulmonary structures and function have restricted widespread OCT investigations and clinical applications, but these will likely be overcome by developments in OCT technology [1]. Some factors that have limited adaptation of OCT into the pulmonary setting in the past have been the shallow depth of penetration, resolution limitations, relatively slow access times, need to examine large surface areas with numerous branching airways, motion artifacts, as well as a need for development of practical imaging probes to reach the relevant locations in a minimally invasive way. Considerable recent engineering and analytical advances in OCT technology [2–8] have already overcome several of these obstacles and will enable much more extensive investigations into the role for structural and functional pulmonary OCT imaging [1].