About the Author:
Mark Brezinski MD, PhD
Brief Summary
Briefly: Mark Brezinski MD,PhD (H index =58) is best known for achieving Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) imaging in nontransparent tissue (including coronary arteries), when previous groups had failed, but his research achievements extend OCT. He has been doing basic science research since 1984. He has spent most of his career at Harvard, MIT, Massachusetts Hospital, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (greater than 25 years). He is a basic scientist, engineer, physician, quantum physicist, and medical educator. He not only trained with Allen Lefer PhD (Thomas Jefferson 
University) and Charles Serhan PhD (Harvard Medical School), but Nobel Laureates including Bengt Samuelsson PhD and E.J. Corey PhD. He did cardiology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), where he would ultimately become an attending first at MGH then BWH. He has had approximately 15 NIH RO1s, at times having five at one time. He has published approximately 150 papers. He is the winner of numerous awards including the Presidential Award for Scientists and Engineers, Young Investigator Award from the America Heart Association, and Top 20 Investiagtors in the 100 Year History of Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) . Dr. Brezinski’s pioneering work can be confirmed from many sources, including in PNAS (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.231388312) for the 2023 Lasker Award “Cardiology is currently the second-largest clinical application. 
Intravascular OCT was pioneered by Mark Brezinski. He approached our group and proposed this area of research. Brezinski led the first studies demonstrating that OCT could detect vulnerable plaques, which cause sudden cardiac arrest. He also led OCT studies in many different areas: imaging gastrointestinal, pulmonary, and urinary tissues, different cancers, nervous tissues, surgical guidance, and fiber optic catheters for internal body imaging.” Unlike ophthalmology, where the author is unaware of any clinical trials where it has been shown to improve morbidity (visual acuity) beyond traditional techniques including visual test, double blind clinical trials have shown to decrease morbidity and mortality with coronary interventions like stenting. The more recent trials including ILUMIEN IV and OCTOBER showed both morbidity and mortality benefits with OCT guidance of intracoronary procedures. Using the October trial in the NEJM 2023 as an example, it demonstrated “"Among patients with complex coronary-artery bifurcation lesions, OCT-guided PCI was associated with a lower incidence of MACE at 2 years than angiography-guided PCI." OCT guided procedures also lead to reduced use of nephrotoxic contrast and reduced procedure time (reduced radiation exposure).
See a more complete research biography of Mark Brezinski MD,PhD:
Mark Brezinski MD, PhD, CPT
