Abstract

Coronary atherosclerosis and epithelial cancers in gastrointestinal (GI) tracts are among the top killers in the world. Diagnosis of coronary artery disease and gastrointestinal cancers requires knowledge of tissue anatomy at the cellular and sub-cellular level. Unfortunately, methods for visualizing coronary arterial wall and GI tracts at high resolution are limited. Much of our knowledge is from histology and electron micrograph (EM) of fixed specimens. As histology and EM is subject to artifact, it provides information that is not wholly representative of the tissue in its native state. Furthermore, it is time consuming to find specific cellular features because each histology or EM image samples a very small portion of the specimen. The development of tools for visualizing coronary artery and GI tract microstructures at the subcellular level in intact human tissue, and ideally within living patients, could therefore open up new opportunities for the study, diagnosis, and treatment of coronary artery disease and early detection of intraepithelial neoplasia at the curable stages. Fig. 1 A representative Micro-OCT image of a plaque in human coronary artery wall ex vivo. The linear hyper-reflective structures are cholesterol crystals. Image size 0.872 mm by 0.4 mm (Width by height).

© 2018 The Author(s)