Intravascular imaging of coronary artery disease: recent progress and future directions.

: Although coronary angiography represents a well established diagnostic modality for percutaneous coronary intervention guidance, recent intravascular imaging techniques, such as intravascular ultrasound, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and near-infrared spectroscopy offer advantages on top of angiography, enhancing the efficacy of lesion evaluation and potentially optimizing the acute and long-term percutaneous coronary intervention outcomes.In addition, recently new generation imaging options have emerged, such as high-definition intravascular ultrasound, polarization-sensitive OCT, intravascular photoacoustic imaging and ultrafast heartbeat OCT. In this review, the current data on the available intravascular imaging techniques, their clinical utility as well as recent technical progresses will be summarized.