Study of flow dynamics in complex vessels using Doppler optical coherence tomography

Doppler optical coherence tomography (DOCT) was applied to non-invasive monitoring of multi-dimensional velocity profiles within complex geometry vessels. The effect of channel geometry on the flow dynamics at different inlet flow rates was studied. We investigated the flow dynamic regime arising at the junction of T- and Y-shaped samples and vessels with aneurism. We show that at constant input volume flow rate, the distribution of flow velocities measured along a cross-sectional plane orthogonal to the inlet arm, located at 20 mm off the junction, exhibited stationary and laminar behaviour. A non-homogeneous distribution of flow velocity along a junction cross-section plane is presented. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of DOCT for mapping the velocity profiles along the vessels' junction with a spatial resolution of about 10 x 10 x 10 mu m(3) and a minimum detectable velocity of about 2 mm s(-1).