Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2021 Mar 18;11:6219. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-85634-3

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

© The Author(s) 2021

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

PMC Copyright notice

Histologic images matched with the optical coherence tomography (OCT) images of the left Eustachian tube from the isthmus portion (A) to the nasopharyngeal opening (D). The hook-shaped Eustachian tube cartilage can be observed at the cartilagenous portion of the Eustachian tube near the isthmus, and the mucosa of the Eustachian tube was identified (A). Low reflective structures of the peritubular muscle and fat tissue were identified in both the OCT images and the corresponding histological section (B). The tubal mucosa, submucosal glandular structures, adipose tissue, and connective tissue were distinguished in the OCT image (C). Nasopharyngeal lymphoid tissues were seen in the nasopharyngeal inlet of the Eustachian tube (D). The position of the OCT catheters are indicated by empty red circles in the histologic images.