Optimal flushing agents for integrated optical and acoustic imaging systems.

An increasing number of integrated optical and acoustic intravascular imaging systems have been developed and hold great promise for accurately diagnosing vulnerable plaques and guiding atherosclerosis treatment. However, in any intravascular environment, the vascular lumen is filled with blood, a high-scattering source for optical and high-frequency ultrasound signals. Blood must be flushed away to provide clearer images. To our knowledge, no research has been performed to find the ideal flushing agent for combined optical and acoustic imaging techniques. We selected three solutions as potential flushing agents for their image-enhancing effects: mannitol, dextran, and iohexol. Testing of these flushing agents was performed in a closed-loop circulation model and in vivo on rabbits. We found that a high concentration of dextran was the most useful for simultaneous intravascular ultrasound and optical coherence tomography imaging.