To detect risk of stroke, tiny probe acts ‘like a microscope’ inside brain’s blood vessels
To better understand problems in the brain’s blood vessels that may lead to stroke, we need a better way to see them. Cardiovascular imaging can peer inside coronary arteries to spot clots blocking blood flow to the heart, but those tools are dangerously large for the smaller arteries inside the brain that twist and turn in tortuous ways.
Now researchers have designed a probe minuscule enough to fit inside the microcatheters that surgeons snake into cerebral arteries to place reinforcing stents or to scoop out clots. Their tiny probe delivered images from inside the arteries of 32 patients, detecting problems by illuminating the tissue and collecting back-scattered near-infrared light, based on a technology called neuro optical coherence tomography, or nOCT.
