Integrated intravascular optical coherence tomography ultrasound imaging system

We report on a dual-modality optical coherence tomography (OCT) ultrasound (US) system for intravascular imaging. To the best of our knowledge, we have developed the first integrated OCT-US probe that combines OCT optical components with an US transducer. The OCT optical components mainly consist of a single-mode fiber, a gradient index lens for light-beam focusing, and a right-angled prism for reflecting light into biological tissue. A 40-MHz piezoelectric transducer (PZT-5H) side-viewing US transducer was fabricated to obtain the US image. These components were integrated into a single probe, enabling both OCT and US imaging at the same time. In vitro OCT and ultrasound images of a rabbit aorta were obtained using this dual-modality imaging system. This study demonstrates the feasibility of an OCT-US system for intravascular imaging, which is expected to have a prominent impact on early detection and characterization of atherosclerosis.