Optical Coherence Elastography of Human Blood Vessel Walls and their Phantoms

A hardware-software method for Young's modulus evaluation for the blood vessel walls is described. The hardware part of the method is a two-channel intravascular system: the first channel is an optical coherence tomography intravascular probe and the second channel is a lead with a sensor for invasive intravascular measurement of blood pressure and blood flow velocity. The software part of the method is an algorithm for matching the quantitative values of displacements in the blood vessel wall under the study with quantitative value of the deforming effect of the pulse wave in the same part. The suggested method could be used for evaluation of the probability of a blood vessel aneurism rupture and to select the most appropriate treatment option.