Clinical applications of intracoronary OCT (invited paper)

Abstract

The most common cause of a heart attack is known as coronary artery disease, which narrows the arteries and reduces the blood flow to the heart. To treat coronary artery stenosis, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) (a nonsurgical procedure to install a stent, which holds the artery wall open) is performed. Intracoronary optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a catheter-based, invasive optical imaging system. To determine whether PCI is appropriate, and to perform stent evaluation in a catheterization laboratory, OCT examinations are carried out. This review details the fundamental principles and technological status of intracoronary OCT imaging, and discusses the ongoing clinical applications to determine the benefits of OCT-guided PCI.