April 1, 2005

Optical technique could be key to helping cardiac patients

A catheter-based imaging technology called optical coherence tomography (OCT), partially developed at the MGH, can successfully identify the characteristics of coronary plaques in patients with various cardiac symptoms. "The ability to identify dangerous plaques before they rupture and produce a heart attack or sudden cardiac death will be crucial to innovative preventive therapies," says Ik-Kyung Jang, MD, PhD, of the MGH Cardiology Division (right) and lead author of the current study, which will appear in the journal Circulation and was released online last week.

Heart attacks and other acute coronary events usually result from the rupture of high-risk, vulnerable plaques in coronary arteries, and the characteristics of those plaques have been identified primarily by autopsy studies. OCT uses infrared light delivered via fiberoptic catheter to produce high-resolution, cross-sectional images of blood vessels.

Study co-authors Guillermo Tearney, MD, PhD, of the MGH Pathology Department and the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at the MGH, and Brett Bouma, PhD, also of the Wellman Center, developed the use of OCT to visualize coronary arteries, including vulnerable plaques. The study showed for the first time that OCT can identify key features of vulnerable plaques, including deposits of fats and a thin cap of fibrous material, in living patients. While more investigation is needed to confirm these findings and better understand the development of plaques, the researchers hope that OCT will someday be able to guide treatment designed to prevent plaque rupture.

Additional MGH co-authors of the study are Briain MacNeill, MD, Masamichi Takano, MD, and Fabian Moselewski, all from MGH Cardiology; Nicusor Iftima, PhD, and Milen Shishkov, PhD, both from the Wellman Center; Stuart Houser, MD, and Thomas Aretz, MD, both from MGH Pathology; and Elkan Halpern, of MGH Radiology.