Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer related death. Macroscopic imaging techniques such as computed tomography are highly sensitivity at detecting small, ≤ 2cm, peripheral pulmonary lesions (PPLs) in the lung but lack the specificity necessary for diagnosis. Bronchoscopy is a procedure routinely performed to diagnose PPLs but is hindered with a low diagnostic yield due to challenging lesion localization. We have developed a flexible transbronchial optical frequency domain imaging (TB-OFDI) catheter that functions as a ‘smart needle’ to confirm the needle placement within the target lesion prior to biopsy. The TB-OFDI smart needle consists of a flexible and removable OFDI catheter that operates within a 21-gauge transbronchial needle aspiration (TBNA) needle. The OFDI catheter can be easily removed from the needle to facilitate subsequent aspiration or biopsy acquisition. The OFDI imaging core consists of an angled-polished ball lens with a spot size of 25 μm at a working distance of 160 μm from the catheter sheath. The ball-lens was designed to have an ellipsoid shape in order to compensate for the astigmatism caused by encasing the optics within a protective sheath. Transbronchial imaging of inflated excised swine lung parenchyma with the TB-OFDI smart needle yielded clear images of alveoli. In-vivo transbronchial imaging was also performed on three swine with artificial lesions injected transthoracially. Our results suggest that the TB-OFDI smart needle may be a useful tool for guiding biopsy acquisition to increase the diagnostic yield of PPLs.

Date Published: 8 March 2013
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 8565, Photonic Therapeutics and Diagnostics IX, 85652W (8 March 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2003022

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8565:
Photonic Therapeutics and Diagnostics IX
Andreas Mandelis; Brian Jet-Fei Wong; Anita Mahadevan-Jansen; Henry Hirschberg M.D.; Hyun Wook Kang; Nikiforos Kollias; Melissa J. Suter; Kenton W. Gregory M.D.; Guillermo J. Tearney M.D.; Stephen Lam; Bernard Choi; Steen J. Madsen; Bodo E. Knudsen M.D.; E. Duco Jansen; Justus F. Ilgner M.D.; Haishan Zeng; Matthew Brenner; Laura Marcu, Editor(s)