NON-INVASIVE DIAGNOSTICS OF NON-TUMOR DISORDERS WITH OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY

Introduction: The distinctive features of modern inflammatory diseases are their indolent course and predisposition to chronicity. Chronic inflammation is the basis for the development of serious disorders, including autoimmune and oncologic ones, and a  cause of major functional abnormalities of the human body. Diagnostics of chronic inflammation is associated with a number of problems which originate from a variety of clinical phenotypes and morphological forms, on the one hand, and from the rising prevalence of their latent course, on the other. In its turn, an adequate treatment choice may be based on understanding and accurate detection of etiological and morphological types of the disease. In this connection, development of novel diagnostic techniques, such as optical coherence tomography (OCT), is of utmost importance. Aim: To demonstrate feasibility of OCT in detection of morphological abnormalities associated with chronic inflammatory disorders of various localizations. Materials and methods: OCT diagnostics was performed in addition to standard diagnostic procedures in 225 patients with chronic inflammatory disorders of various localizations, such as chronic recurrent rhinitis, chronic latent salpingitis and chronic endometritis. For OCT, an “OCT-1300U” system was used, with central wavelength of 1280 nm, spatial resolution of 15–20 μm, image acquisition rate of 8 frames per second, imaging depth of 1.4 mm and a probe diameter of 2.4 mm. The following techniques of quantitative processing were used for processing of the OCT images. Quantitative characterization of histograms and image texture was performed with further determination of values typical for various images groups corresponding to particular states of biological tissues. Neural network was also employed with histograms and 2D Fourier transforms of the images as input data. Results: OCT laparoscopy allowed to obtain three types of OCT images of fallopian tubes with features typical for healthy and inflammatory states. Presence of heterogeneity in the structure of an OCT image indicated heterogeneity in the muscle layer of the fallopian tube, which allowed for a conclusion on chronic salpingitis. With OCT hysteroscopy we demonstrated the ability of OCT to visualize pathomorphologic features of chronic endometritis. The diagnostic data obtained by OCT-rhinoscopy allowed to draw preliminary conclusions on the OCT ability to detect specific features of various types of chronic rhinitis. Numerical processing of diagnostic OCT images resulted in their higher objectivity and an improvement of diagnostic accuracy of the technique. Conclusion: OCT is able to detect morphological changes induced by a  chronic inflammatory process. OCT criteria were shown to be universal for various organs. We demonstrated the possibility of non-invasive diagnostics of pathomorphologic forms of disease, showed some challenges in the development of OCT for diagnostics of non-tumor disorders and ways to overcome them are proposed, in particular, the use of image numerical processing. Further studies seem to be justified.

optical coherence tomography, hysteroscopy, laparoscopy, rhinoscopy, pelvic inflammatory diseases, chronic endometritis, chronic salpingitis, chronic rhinitis