Heartbeat OCT and Motion-Free 3D in Vivo Coronary Artery Microscopy

Intravascular optical coherence tomography (IV-OCT) has gained widespread use over the past few years, offering highly detailed images of coronary artery pathologies and interventions (1). In contrast to the cross-sectional view, longitudinal sections and 3-dimensional (3D) renderings are affected by cardiac motion artifacts and undersampling, complicating interpretation and measurements (2). We developed Heartbeat OCT, a new OCT method that achieves up to 4,000 frames/s imaging speed for isotropically sampled volume datasets acquired within the diastolic phase of 1 cardiac cycle to restore 3D IV-OCT image fidelity. In this research letter, we present the first in vivo data acquired with this new experimental technology.