Confocal Laser Endomicroscopy and Optical Coherence Tomography for Diagnosing ILD.

Overview

Often, assessing a classifying diagnosis in patients with interstitial lung disease provides a diagnostic challenge. Currently HRCT, endoscopic or surgical video assisted thoracoscopic surgery(VATS) assessment including lung biopsies are diagnostic tools for patients with suspected ILD. However, tissue acquisition is associated with morbidity in these patients with an already compromised pulmonary function. In clinical practice this results in the fact that only a minor part of patients with an indication for tissue acquisition are actually undergoing biopsies. The aim of this study is to determine ILD-characteristics on imagign collected with minimal invasive novel optical techniques, to examine whether the addition of novel optical techniques to the diagnostic process of ILD could potentially limit the need for a tissue- (surgical) diagnosis and/or reduce the sampling error rate of biopsies by providing additional information on biopsy location.

Novel probe based optical techniques such as Confocal laser endomicroscopy (pCLE) and Optical coherence tomography (pOCT) are non-invasive optical techniques, compatible with conventional diagnostic bronchoscopes and provide non-invasive, real-time information on the airway wall and the alveolar compartment. Therefore, immediate validation of optical measurements during a biopsy is possible. Optical techniques might either obviate the need for an tissue biopsy or improve the diagnostic yield of conventional biopsy methods and make surgical lung biopsies that are associated with high morbidity and costs redundant. Hypothesis: Novel optical techniques (pCLE and pOCT) provide real time information about the characteristics of the mucosa and/or the alveolar compartment in ILD.

Conditions

Interventions