In vivo endovascular flow measurement. (a) 3D OCT image
of the catheter and the vessel wall, which shows the angle between the
catheter and the wall is ~10°. (b) Simulation results of blood
flow. (c) Cross-sectional OCT image of a porcine carotid artery with
shadow casted by guide wire. (d) The same cross-section as (c) imaged by
500 A-lines/frame with Doppler shift overlaid, showing mainly noise. (e)
and (f) (Media
1 (4.7MB, AVI) ). (e) Phase shift image, 2500
A-lines/frame, without NURD induced phase artifact removal. It shows
distorted phase contour lines. (f) Phase shift image after NURD induced
phase artifact removal by tracking the phase shift in the catheter
sheath. The corrected phase contour lines are as expected. The NURD
induced artifact is time variant, as shown by
Media
1 (4.7MB, AVI) . (g) A typical cross-sectional
frame, 2500 A-lines/frame with Doppler shift overlaid, showing aliased
phase changes. (h) The unwrapped phase map of (g), where * indicates the
highest velocity region. The arrows indicate incorrect phase unwrapping
due to noise and high shear rate near the vessel wall. Scale bars = 1
mm.