Abstract
Purpose: :
To study the retinal and choroidal thickness by swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) at 1050 nm wavelength in persons from a general elderly population.
Methods: :
Participants (55+ yrs) of the population-based Rotterdam Study underwent multiple extensive ophthalmic examinations including fundus photography and OCT. A subset (n=220 eyes of 111 participants) was imaged using the new swept-source OCT prototype system (DRI-OCT-1, Topcon Corp, Japan) at 100 kHz A-scan repetition rate with 100nm sweeping range, yielding 8 μm axial resolution in tissue. Retinal and choroidal thickness maps of the fovea were created by automated segmentation with manual correction. Associations with common denominators were investigated using Pearson correlation and linear regression models.
Results: :
Scan time of each three dimensional image was 0.8 seconds; 93% (n=205) of scans were of high-quality. Mean (standard deviation) retinal and choroidal thickness of the right eyes (n= 103) were 219.57 (41.3) and 212.5 (36.0) μm, respectively. The correlation between left and right eyes was 0.762 (Pearson correlation p<0.0001). We observed a significant association between choroidal thickness and age (-5.592 μm per year; p<0.0001); not between retinal thickness and age, nor between retinal or choroidal thickness and gender. Choroidal thickness (-13.670 μm per mm; P=0.003), but not retinal thickness, was significantly associated with axial length.
Conclusions: :
The new SS-OCT system at 1 μm is a fast and relatively easy means to evaluate retinal and choroidal thickness in large studies, providing new opportunities for retinal research.
Keywords: imaging methods (CT, FA, ICG, MRI, OCT, RTA, SLO, ultrasound) • choroid