A novel alignment procedure to assess calcified coronary plaques in histopathology, post-mortem computed tomography angiography and optical coherence tomography.

Abstract Purpose Improve mapping and registration of longitudinal view on histopathology vessels in a three-dimensional alignment procedure for postmortem quantitative coronary plaque analyses. This new procedure is applied and results shown using calcified coronary plaque analyses within post-mortem computed tomography angiography (PMCTA), optical coherence tomography (OCT) and the gold standard of histopathology. Results In total, 338 annotated histopathology images were included, 166 PMCTA transversal images and 285 OCT images were aligned in the comparison. The results from the comparison using the alignment procedure showed overall that the calcified plaques seem to be overestimated by PMCTA and underestimated by OCT. Conclusions The 3D fusion approach, aligning the images of PMCTA, OCT and histopathology as gold standard allowed for a slice-based comparison of the different modalities. The results showed that PMCTA overestimates the calcified plaques while OCT underestimates these, compared to histopathology. Highlights • Alignment included 338 histopathology images, 166 PMCTA transversal images and 285 OCT images. • The 3D fusion approach allowed for a slice-based comparison of PMCTA, OCT and histopathology. • PMCTA overestimated the calcified plaques and OCT underestimates these, compared to histology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]