Measuring airway stiffness using optical imaging – a new tool to help understand lung diseases.

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The purpose of this study is to evaluate the clinical usefulness of a new diagnostic laser that has been developed at the University of Western Australia. The device is an imaging tool that can make various measurements of the inside of the lungs to help improve our understanding of the lungs in health and disease. Current lung function tests give us information about the lungs as a whole but do not tell us about specific regions within the lungs. Most lung disorders affect different parts of the lungs and to different degrees. Many of these changes are related to the varying degrees of “stiffness” within the air tubes, but at present doctors don’t have adequate tools to measure this airway property. We have developed an optical imaging technique that we think may provide a way to measure these properties. The system has been developed by two research groups, the West Australian Sleep Disorders Research Institute at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and the Optical and Biomedical Engineering Laboratory at the University of Western Australia. We have had encouraging results using this device in the upper airway (throat) of awake, sleeping and anaesthetised volunteers and have started using it in patients with windpipe cancers to improve their care. We would now like to use the system to make measurements of airway “stiffness” which we think will help understand lung diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and bronchiectasis.