Optical coherence tomography imaging of structural components of the respiratory tract

For optimal curative treatment and the prevention of metastasis, it is critical that premalignant lesions are detected as early as possible. However, current diagnostic methods for human airways do not possess sufficient resolution and tissue penetration depth to detect these aberrations. Therefore it is necessary to develop safe, reproducible imaging techniques with high spatial resolution. In this study, optical coherence tomography (OCT) was used to obtain cross sectional images of porcine respiratory tract tissue. OCT images were compared to parallel conventional histological sections. Our objective was to establish whether OCT differentiates the microstructural layers of the respiratory tract. These data demonstrate that OCT can characterise the multilayered structure of the airways, with a depth of up to 2mm and a 10 mum spatial resolution. The subtle structural differences between trachea, main bronchus and tertiary bronchus were clearly identifiable. The epithelium, sub-epithelial tissues and cartilage were individually defined. In addition, the relative thickness of the structural components was comparable to histological sections. These data suggest that OCT is a highly feasible diagnostic tool, which requires further exploration for early detection of human airway pathology.