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New and Current Clinical Imaging Techniques to Study Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

¹ The Providence Heart and Lung Institute and ² The James Hogg iCAPTURE Center, St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver; ³ Department of Medicine and ⁴ Department of Radiology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver; ⁵ The British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, British Columbia; ⁶ Imaging Research Laboratories, Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario; and ⁷ Department of Medical Biophysics and Department of Medical Imaging, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to Don D. Sin, M.D., Providence Heart and Lung Institute, St. Paul's Hospital, 1081 Burrard Street, Vancouver, BC, V6Z 1Y6 Canada. E-mail: don.sin{at}hli.ubc.ca

ABSTRACT

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous disease characterized by both small airway and parenchymal abnormalities. There is increasing evidence to suggest that these two morphologic phenotypes, although related, may have different clinical presentations, prognosis, and therapeutic responses to medications. With the advent of novel imaging modalities, it is now possible to evaluate these two morphologic phenotypes in large clinical studies using noninvasive or minimally invasive methods such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and optical coherence tomography (OCT). In this article, we provide an overview of these imaging modalities in the context of COPD and discuss their strengths as well as their limitations for providing quantitative COPD phenotypes.

Key Words: chronic obstructive pulmonary disease • imaging • phenotype