Figure 3
From: Fast assessment of lipid content in arteries in vivo by intravascular photoacoustic tomography
Performance of sheath material candidates. (a–d) Performance of five sheath material candidates by IVPA imaging of a heat-shrink tube to evaluate the signal transmission and artifact generation from the sheath. The value of artifact is regarded as the maximum signal from the sheath and the transmission is determined by comparing with bare catheter situation. The detailed imaging results can be found in Supplementary Fig. S2. (e–g) Comparative IVPA images of a human coronary artery imaged ex vivo in different environments: (e) bare catheter without a sheath and with luminal PBS, (f) catheter with D2O-filled PU sheath and luminal PBS, and (g) catheter with D2O-filled PU sheath and luminal blood. The scale bar is 1 mm for cross-sectional images. Error bars in (a–d) were resulted from five consecutive measurements of the target. FEP: fluorinated ethylene propylene, PTFE: polytetrafluoroethylene, PI: polyimide, PE: polyethylene, PU: polyurethane, PBS: phosphate-buffered saline.
