Vulnerable plaque rupture is the most important cause of myocardial infarction and acute coronary syndrome. Therefore, identifying vulnerable plaques is of prime importance, which will in turn aid in the development of treatments to stabilise them. Currently, there are a number of techniques to detect vulnerable plaques. This review article gives a brief understanding about the current optical imaging techniques used to detect vulnerable plaques. The methods used currently are spectroscopy, angioscopy, near-infrared spectroscopy, photoacoustic imaging and, optical coherence tomography. Moreover, this article aims at assessing the state-of-the-art optical imaging techniques used for vulnerable plaque detection.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.