High-frequency optical coherence tomography predictors of aneurysm occlusion following flow diverter treatment in a preclinical model.

Background: High-frequency optical coherence tomography (HF-OCT) is an intravascular imaging method that allows for volumetric imaging of flow diverters in vivo.

Objective: To examine the hypothesis that a threshold for both volume and area of communicating malapposition can be predictive of early aneurysm occlusion.

Methods: Fifty-two rabbits underwent elastase aneurysm formation, followed by treatment with a flow diverter. At the time of implant, HF-OCT was acquired to study the rate and degree of communicating malapposition. Treated aneurysms were allowed to heal for either 90 or 180 days and euthanized following catheter angiography. Healing was dichotomized into aneurysm remnant or neck remnant/complete occlusion. Communicating malapposition was measured by HF-OCT using a semi-automatic algorithm able to detect any points where the flow diverter was more than 50 µm from the vessel wall. This was then summed across image slices to either a volume or area. Finally, a subsampled population was used to train a statistical classifier for the larger dataset.

Results: No difference in occlusion rate was found between device type or follow-up time (p=0.28 and p=0.67, respectively). Both volume and area of malapposition were significantly lower in aneurysms with a good outcome (p<0.001, both). From the statistical model, a volume of less than 0.56 mm or a normalized area less than 0.69 as quantified by HF-OCT was predictive of occlusion (p<0.001, each).

Conclusions: HF-OCT allows for measurements of both volume and area of malapposition and, from these measurements, an accurate prediction for early aneurysm occlusion can be made.