Translation of infrared chemical imaging for cardiovascular evaluation

Infrared (IR) spectroscopic imaging has been applied to study histology of cardiovascular tissue, primarily using Fourier transform IR (FTIR) Imaging. Here we describe results for histologic imaging of cardiac biopsies using a fast, discrete frequency IR (DFIR) imaging system. Histologic classification of tissue is understood in terms of the constituent frequencies and speeded up by careful optimization of the data acquired. Results are compared to FTIR imaging in terms of the signal to noise ratio and information content.