Fusion of OCT and hyperspectral imaging for tissue diagnosis and assessment

Abstract

The combination of molecular (hyperspectral imaging) and morphological (optical coherent tomography imaging) optical technologies helps in the assessment of biological tissue both in pathological diagnosis and in the follow-up treatments. The co-registration of both imaging features allows quantifying the presence of chromophores and the subsurface structure of tissue. This work proposes the fusion of two optical imaging technologies for the characterization of different types of tissues where the attenuation coefficient calculated from OCT imaging serves to track the presence of anomalies in the distribution of chromophores over the sample and therefore to diagnose pathological conditions. The performance of two customized hyperspectral imaging systems working in two complementary spectral ranges (VisNIR from 400 to 1000 nm, and SWIR 1000 to 1700 nm) and one commercial OCT system working at 1325 nm reveals the presence of fibrosis, collagen alterations and lipid content in cardiovascular tissues such as aortic walls (to assess on aneurysmal conditions) or tendinous chords (to diagnose the integrity of the valvular system) or in muscular diseases prone to fibrotic changes and inflammation.