Optical Biopsy in Human Pancreatobiliary Tissue Using Optical Coherence Tomography

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a new technique for performing high-re solution, cross-sectional tomographic imaging in human tissue. OCT is analogous to ultrasound B mode imaging except that it uses light rather than acoustical waves. As a result, OCT has over 10 times the resolution of currently available clinical high-re solution cross-sectional imaging technologie s. In this work, we investigate the capability of OCT to differentiate the architec-tural morphology of pancreatobiliary tissues. Normal pancreatobiliary tissues, including the gallbladde r, common bile duct, pancreatic duct, and pancreas were taken postmortem and imaged using OCT. Images were compared to corresponding histology to con ® rm tissue identity. Microstructure was delineated in different tissues, including tissue laye rs, glands, submucosal microvasculature, and pancreatic isle ts of Lange rhans. The ability of OCT to provide high-re solution imaging of pancreatobiliary architectural morphology sugge sts the feasibility of using OCT as a powerful diagnostic endoscopic imaging technology to image early stage s of pancreatobiliary disease. KEY WORDS: optical coherence tomography; optical biopsy; microscopy; imaging; pancreatobiliary tissue. Recently, high-frequency ultrasound transducer