Practical Challenges of Current Video Rate OCT Elastography: Accounting for Dynamic and Static Tissue Properties.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Optics
• Medical Imaging
• Biophysics

Background:

• Optical coherence tomography elastography (OCTE) is a promising technique for diagnosing various pathologies, including cardiovascular diseases, osteoarthritis, and malignancies.
• Current OCTE approaches face limitations in scalability for real-time, in vivo imaging.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and address the limitations of current OCTE methods that prevent real-time, in vivo tissue characterization.
• To present a novel approach for overcoming challenges in video-rate OCTE assessments.

Main Methods:

• Evaluation of current OCTE approaches and their constraints for in vivo applications.
• Analysis of dynamic tissue responses, such as strain response time, preload variability, and conditioning variability.
• Development of a top-down strategy to enable real-time in vivo tissue characterization.

Main Results:

• Current OCTE designs often overlook critical dynamic tissue responses, leading to inaccurate modulus assessments at video rates.
• Tissue strain response delays (approx. 20 msec) and variability prevent accurate modulus evaluation in real-time B-scans.
• Existing pulsed OCTE techniques exacerbate modulus unpredictability due to constantly changing strain during acquisition.

Conclusions:

• Accounting for dynamic tissue responses is crucial for advancing OCTE to real-time, in vivo applications.
• A novel video-rate OCTE approach is introduced to overcome existing limitations in accurate tissue characterization.
• The developed method aims to enable accurate, real-time assessment of tissue properties for improved diagnostics.