The Choroidal Vascularity Index Decreases and Choroidal Thickness Increases in Vogt–Koyanagi–Harada Disease Patients During a Recurrent Anterior Uveitis Attack

ABSTRACT

Purpose: To measure changes in the choroidal vascularity index (CVI) in chronic Vogt–Koyanagi–Harada (VKH) disease during a recurrent anterior uveitis attack.

Methods: Forty VKH patients and 40 normal controls were included in this study. Choroidal images were recorded before and during a recurrent anterior uveitis attack, as well as after appropriate treatment. CVI was measured by the binarization technique using ImageJ software (Bethesda, MD).

Results: The CVI was 0.75 ± 0.09 in quiescent VKH patients, which was significantly higher compared to healthy controls (0.70 ± 0.05, p ＜ 0.0001). The CVI significantly decreased to 0.72 ± 0.09 when granulomatous anterior uveitis appeared in these patients. However, it returned to 0.75 ± 0.08 after uveitis resolved.

Conclusions: A significant decrease of the CVI occurred during recurrent anterior uveitis in chronic VKH. CVI may provide a novel parameter to guide the treatment of VKH disease.

Keywords:

• Binarized image
• choroidal thickness
• choroidal vascularity index
• enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography
• Vogt–Koyanagi–Harada disease

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We thank all the patients and healthy controls who participated in this study.

DECLARATION OF INTEREST

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

FUNDING

This work was supported by the Chongqing Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology (CSTC, 2008CA5003), the National Key Clinical Specialties Construction Program of China, the Key Project of Health Bureau of Chongqing (2012-1-003)， the Chongqing Science & Technology Platform and Base Construction Program (cstc2014pt-sy10002), the Major Research Development Program of China (2016YFC0904000), and the Bethune Charitable Foundation (BJ-LM2016004L). The sponsor or funding organization had no role in the design or conduct of this research.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Chongqing Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology (CSTC, 2008CA5003), the National Key Clinical Specialties Construction Program of China, the Key Project of Health Bureau of Chongqing (2012-1-003)， the Chongqing Science & Technology Platform and Base Construction Program (cstc2014pt-sy10002), the Major Research Development Program of China (2016YFC0904000), and the Bethune Charitable Foundation (BJ-LM2016004L). The sponsor or funding organization had no role in the design or conduct of this research.