Histology-validated x-ray tomography for imaging human coronary arteries

Abstract

Heart disease is the number one cause of death worldwide. To improve therapy and patient outcome, the knowledge of anatomical changes in terms of lumen morphology and tissue composition of constricted arteries is crucial for designing a localized drug delivery to treat atherosclerosis disease. Traditional tissue characterization by histology is a pivotal tool, although it brings disadvantages such as vessel morphology modification during decalcification and slicing. X-ray tomography in absorption and phase contrast modes yields a deep understanding in blood vessel anatomy in healthy and diseased stages: measurements in absorption mode make visible highly absorbing tissue components including cholesterol plaques, whereas phase contrast tomography gains better contrast of the soft tissue components such as vessel walls. Established synchrotron radiation-based micro-CT techniques ensure high performance in terms of 3D visualization of highly absorbing and soft tissues.

Sub-micrometer morphology of human atherosclerotic plaque revealed by synchrotron radiation-based μCT—A comparison with histology

“…Imaging of plaques ex vivo with computed tomography (CT) offers a non-destructive method to analyze plaques. Previous studies with phase-contrast micro-CT (μCT) on human carotid arteries [ 5 , 8 – 11 ] and coronary arteries [ 8 , 9 , 12 – 14 ] have been performed on laboratory-based CT, as well as synchrotron radiation-based CT with micron resolution but to our knowledge, not with submicron voxel size. We hypothesized that a higher resolution would facilitate comparison with histology in micro-structures and provide more information.…”

Cellular-resolution 3D virtual histology of human coronary arteries using x-ray phase tomography

“…Micro-CT on carotid artery samples show similar properties 12 , 13 . However, x-ray phase-contrast methods have demonstrated much better soft tissue contrast 14 , and have enabled improved imaging and soft-tissue differentiation both in human coronary arteries 10 , 15 – 17 and in human carotid arteries 16 , 18 – 20 . These studies rely on grating-based phase-contrast images (GBI, cf.…”

“…Consequently, cellular-sized soft-tissue features like the fibrous cap or foam cells are not observable. Synchrotron-based systems 10 , 17 – 19 have demonstrated somewhat better detail (several tens of micrometers) and contrast but naturally lack the accessibility of the laboratory systems.…”