Turbulence monitoring with Doppler Optical Coherence Tomography

The study of flow dynamics in micro vessels is highly important in rheology and cardiology to enable a better understanding of the effect of blood flow on the possible rupture of atherosclerotic plaques. Doppler Optical Coherence Tomography is able to provide a very high velocity resolution down to 10 mu m s(-1). The technique offers the potential to achieve a more detailed analysis of the flow/vessel interactions than current clinical practice offers; allowing simultaneously high resolution imaging of the morphology and composition of the atherosclerotic plaque and of the flow velocity vectorial field distribution along the measured cross-section. We use Doppler Optical Coherence Tomography to image high-resolution one-dimensional and multi-dimensional velocity distribution profiles of Intralipid solution flowing in complex micro-channels. A set of T- and Y-shaped phantoms were built to study the interaction of the flow dynamics with different channel geometries and to map the related velocity profiles at several inlet volume flow rates. In the current report we demonstrate the possibility of the technique for quantitative observation of the turbulence of flows arising within the complex micro-channel phantoms.