Coronary artery disease is frequently treated with stents, but the increasing prevalence of calcified plaques in arteries impedes stent expansion, making biomechanical assessment critical for predicting clinical outcomes. Intravascular optical coherence elastography (IV-OCE) may help address the limitations of current modalities when imaging inside blood vessels by using shear waves to determine tissue stiffness. However, current OCE processing pipelines are limited to two dimensions and are not applicable to 3D shear wavefields in blood vessel walls. This project proposes extending asynchronous IV-OCE to enable high-resolution, 3D estimation of coronary plaque mechanical properties under realistic physiological conditions. This involves the development of a novel 3D signal processing framework and its validation in tissue-mimicking phantoms.

I am participating in SuperUROP because I wish to use what I’ve learned in classes to advance my research skills in a multidisciplinary setting. I also hope to publish a paper by the end of SuperUROP.