http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5986-5047
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ABSTRACT
Introduction: The evaluation of retinal vessels and the retinal blood flow is important for ocular diseases. We introduce a spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) based method for facilitating a retinal blood vessel analysis using the scattering properties of retinal vessels. The intensity of the distal shadow of vessels caused by the scattered signal is measured, correlated with the pulsatile ocular blood flow (POBF), and its repeatability is analyzed.
Methods: About 20 eyes of 20 healthy, young participants (mean age 23.15 years, standard deviation 2.3 years) were included in the analysis. Participants underwent ophthalmic diagnostics including three repeated SD-OCT examinations and measurement of POBF. The vessel shadow intensity analysis is based on peripapillary SD-OCT scans and automatically analyses the intensity of the distal vessel shadow compared to its surroundings.
Results: The distal shadow of arteries in SD-OCT scans correlated with the POBF (r = 0.647, p = 0.002). Furthermore, the shadow intensity correlated with the established morphological arterio-venous ratio. The evaluation of repeatability was performed using the interclass correlation coefficient (ICC), showing good repeatability for individual vessels (ICC = 0.825) and arteries (ICC = 0.820).
Conclusions: In summary, we indicate that the scattering properties of retinal vessels in SD-OCT images might correlate with the vessel morphology and for retinal arteries with the retinal blood flow volume as well. Further studies are needed to establish this method’s sensitivity and specificity in participants with retinal and cardiovascular diseases.
Abbreviations
| ART | = | automatic real-time averaging mode |
| AV | = | arterio-venous |
| CRAE-6 | = | central retinal artery equivalent |
| CRVE-6 | = | central retinal vein equivalent |
| cSLO | = | confocal scanner laser ophthalmoscopy |
| ICC | = | interclass correlation coefficient |
| IOP | = | intraocular pressure |
| POBF | = | pulsatile ocular blood flow |
| RNFL | = | retinal nerve fiber layer |
| SD-OCT | = | spectral domain optical coherence tomography |
| VSI | = | vessel shadow intensity |
Acknowledgments
None.
Disclosure Statement
Carsten Framme has received honoraria from Heidelberg Engineering.
No competing relationship exists for any other author.
The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.