Spectroscopic Intravascular OCT for Quantitative Tissue Characterization in Coronary Arteries

We present a spectroscopic intravascular optical coherence tomography (IV-OCT) system capable of quantitative tissue characterization in coronary arteries. By leveraging wavelength-dependent attenuation coefficients extracted from depth-resolved spectral analysis, our method distinguishes lipid-rich, fibrous, and calcified plaque components with 94% classification accuracy. The system employs a swept-source laser operating at 1310 nm center wavelength with 100 nm bandwidth, achieving 8 µm axial resolution at 200 kHz A-line rate. We validate the approach against histology in 47 ex vivo human coronary artery segments and demonstrate real-time operation in a porcine model.