Max Hospital Holds Workshop on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)

By 121 News Reporter

Chandigarh 20^th September:- A health work shop on Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) was held at Max Super Speciality Hospital (MSSH), Mohali which was attended by over 20 Cardiologists from the region. Speaking during occasion, Dr Sudheer Saxena, Director & Head Cardiology, MSSH said that there were many advantages of using OCT over intravascular imaging (IVUS) which was conventionally used to evaluate angioplasty patients.

Dr Sudheer Saxena, said that both OCT and IVUS were used to make measurements for lesion length and lumen size, but OCT has emerged as more accurate and was advantageous to interventional cardiologists thanks to its high-resolution imaging technique that offered microscopic visualization of coronary plaques. Talking about the advantages of OCT over IVUS, Dr Saxena informed that OCToffered clear, photographic quality images, as opposed to grainy, lower-resolution IVUS images. Many interventionists were confounded by the speckled IVUS images, which were sometimes difficult to interpret. Fine details, such as stent position and thrombus, could be difficult to detect through IVUS. Whereas OCT would give a clear picture on whether stent deployed in heart was endothelialized or not .

Dr Saxena added that moreover OCT and IVUS technologies were analogous in nature. Where OCT would use light and IVUS use sound waves into the vessel wall where the energy was sent back to the catheter to reconstruct an image. The wavelength of light was much shorter and much faster than to sound waves. For this reason, OCT has a resolution of 10 microns which was 10 times greater than of IVUS. He further remarked that interestingly in OCT images the Interventionists could easily see thrombus the blood clots in arteries of heart which could lead to blocking of heart vessels and thin-cap atheroma which give rise to heart attacks.