Preclinical assessment of agreement between optical frequency domain imaging and pathology in rabbit subglottic...

The pediatric subglottic airway is susceptible to various pathological conditions, both congenital and acquired. Accurate imaging of subglottic mucosal lesions is essential for appropriate treatments, but existing methods such as bronchoscopy or computed tomography (CT) often lack resolution or objectivity. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has been used, but the correlation between OCT-based imaging and histopathological findings has not been evaluated. Optical frequency domain imaging (OFDI), a clinical-grade variant of OCT, offers higher resolution and faster acquisition. We aimed to evaluate whether OFDI can safely and clearly visualize subglottic mucosal structures and examine how well the imaging findings correspond to histological features in an animal model.

Twelve rabbits weighing approximately 3 kg were used. Under anesthesia, brush scrubbing was performed to induce mucosal lesions in the subglottic space. The resected larynx was pathologically examined. The primary efficacy endpoints were circumferential visualization of the subglottic space and concordance with pathology in differentiating between the cartilage, mucosa, and lesions. The primary safety endpoints were the absence of mucosal injury and catheter dislodgement during OFDI.

Clear images of the subglottic space were obtained, and OFDI clearly distinguished the cartilage from the mucosa and lesions. The interobserver reliability of the OCT assessment was 0.87, and the agreement between OCT and the histological assessment was 0.94. No mucosal hemorrhage or catheterization-induced dehiscence was observed.

Our findings suggest that OFDI can be used safely and has a diagnostic performance comparable to that of histological assessment of mucosal lesions in the subglottic space.