Evaluating glaucoma damage: emerging imaging technologies

Abstract

The use of ocular imaging tools to estimate structural and functional damage in glaucoma has become a common clinical practice and a substantial focus of vision research. The evolution of the imaging technologies through increased scanning speed, penetration depth, image registration and development of multimodal devices has the potential to detect the pathology more reliably and in earlier stages. This review is focused on new ocular imaging modalities used for glaucoma diagnosis.

Keywords:

• adaptive optics
• glaucoma
• OCT aqueous humor outflow
• OCT blood flow
• phase-sensitive OCT
• polarization-sensitive OCT
• spectral domain OCT
• swept source OCT

Acknowledgements

Supported in part by National Institutes of Health contracts R01-EY013178, P30-EY008098 (Bethesda, MD); Eye and Ear Foundation (Pittsburgh, PA); Research to Prevent Blindness (New York, NY).

Financial & competing interests disclosure

JS Schuman receives royalties for intellectual property licensed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Zeiss. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Key issues

• The improved specifications of ocular imaging allow better disease diagnosis and monitoring capabilities and further insight into the pathophysiology of glaucoma.

• Spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology uses the light frequency information to determine the spatial location of reflected light and to provide in vivo high-resolution images.

• Swept-source OCT acquires frequency information by sweeping a narrow bandwidth light source through a broad range of frequencies.

• Adaptive optics method corrects optical aberrations and when coupled with ocular imaging devices can provide in vivo images of the retinal microvasculature, photoreceptors, ganglion cells, and the lamina cribrosa at the cellular level.

• Polarization-sensitive OCT provides cross-sectional intensity information with the polarization status of the tissue.

• Phase-sensitive OCT enables detection of minute, sub-cellular level movements.

Notes