In gastroenterology, physicians using OCT may be able to diagnose esophageal cancer and Barrett’s esophagus earlier, giving patients a better chance to beat  these devastating diseases.

Laser implications:

In esophageal OCT applications, the catheter can be positioned against the esophageal wall and must image both the near side and the far sides.  The long working distance requirement necessitates a source with a long coherence length.  The Insight laser provides a coherence length of 40 mm—many times longer than competitive light sources.  High scan speed of the Insight laser allows faster imaging and less patient discomfort.  The laser's high optical quality provides more faithful image segmentation, allowing more sensitive and specific diagnosis of precancerous conditions.

Additional general information:

1. In vivo optical coherence tomography imaging of preinvasive bronchial lesions
2. Video of a normal esophagus
3. Video of an esophagus with Barrett's esophagus disorder

Additional technical information:

1. Ultrahigh resolution optical coherence tomography of Barrett's esophagus: preliminary descriptive clinical study correlating images with histology
2. Optical coherence tomography for the staging of tumor infiltration in superficial esophageal squamous cell carcinoma
3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2890226/figure/F1/
4. Three-dimensional optical coherence tomography of Barrett’s esophagus and buried glands beneath neo-squamous epithelium following radiofrequency ablation
5. Cervical inlet patch-optical coherence tomography imaging and clinical significance

Barrett's esophagus OCT image (top)
and histology (bottom).

Cysts are clearly shown in the OCT scan (top image)
and in the tissue (bottom image).

3D OCT image of normal esophageal tissue.

Abnormal esophageal and tumorous segment.