Massachusetts General Hospital is launching a global registry of patients that have had optical coherence tomography scans of the coronary arteries.
OCT is a light-based imaging technique, sometimes referred to as optical ultrasound, used to obtain images that identify vulnerable plaques, which can cause heart attack and sudden cardiac arrest.
MGH researchers will collect data from 3,000 patients at 20 different sites worldwide who have had OCT of the arteries during catheterization procedures and follow them for five years, aiming to determine the effectiveness of the technique in identifying at-risk patients and of follow-up stenting procedures. The project was announced at a recent symposium held by the hospital and sponsored by LightLab Imaging Inc., a Westford, Mass.-based intra-vascular imaging company.
The research sites will be in Australia, China, Japan, Korea and the U.S.
