Purpose:
Interest in the anatomy of the retina in eyes with amblyopia has been renewed due to advances of in vivo imaging capability. Here we investigate foveal structure in adults and children with amblyopia using Fourier domain optical coherence tomography (OCT).
Methods:
Foveal structure was assessed in 35 adult amblyopes ( 45.8±15.7yrs), 43 adults controls (30.8±9.2yrs), 26 child amblyopes (7.5±2.4yrs) and 65 child controls (4.4±0.7yrs) using the Topcon 3DOCT 1000. We identified, using custom software, a variety of foveal landmarks including the foveal pit and peak nasal retinal thickness thus allowing determination of foveal thickness (FT) and nasal retinal thickness (NRT).
Results:
ANOVA with post-hoc analysis indicates no significant difference in foveal thickness between amblyopic, fellow and controls eyes in either adult group or child group. Foveal thickness is greater in adults than in children irrespective of eye classification. By contrast, there was no difference in nasal retinal thickness in either amblyopic or fellow eye between adults and children but the adults exhibited a thicker nasal retina compared with the child controls. Foveal pit depth in the adult controls was not significantly different from child eyes but was deeper than in adult amblyopic (p=.012) and fellow eyes (p=.049). The horizontal separation between foveal pit and peak nasal retinal thickness did not differ as a function of eye or age classification.
Conclusions:
This cross-sectional analysis of the foveal structure in amblyopic eyes indicates that the papillomacular region is thicker in both eyes of amblyopic children relative to visually normal children and does not seem to increase with age as appears to happen in visual normals. Together with the apparent increase of foveal thickness with age in both amblyopes and normals, this produces a flattening of the foveal profile in adult amblyopes.
Keywords: amblyopia • imaging/image analysis: clinical • retina