Abstract
Purpose :
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) angiography is a recently developed technique that can detect blood vessels and delineate the vascular pattern in the retina. This technique should be useful for studying the blood vessel patterns in eyes with diabetic retinopathy. However, its capabilities in detecting neovascularizations and nonperfused areas of the retina have not been determined. Thus, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the capability of OCT angiography in detecting neovascularization and capillary nonperfused areas in eyes with diabetic retinopathy.
Methods :
Thirty-four eyes with diabetic retinopathy (23 patients, 14 men and 9 women, average age 53.2±13.8 years) were studied. OCT angiography was performed with the Cirrus OCT (Carl Zeiss Meditec). The entire posterior pole was scanned by moving the fixation point to 9 sites with the 6x6 mm scanning program. These images were combined and a wide-field OCT angiographic map was created. To evaluate the retinal vasculature, the segmentation was adjusted to be between the retinal pigment epithelium and the internal limiting membrane (ILM) for retinal en face maps. To evaluate neovascularization, the segmentation was adjusted to be between the internal limiting membrane and vitreous cavity for vitreo-retinal interface en face maps. Fluorescein angiography was performed with the Optos 200Tx (Optos PLC). The number of neovascularizations and local capillary nonperfused areas was counted and compared in the images obtained by OCT angiography and fluorescein angiography.
Results :
The mean±SD number of neovascularization was 1.9±4.0 by both OCT angiography and fluorescein angiography. All of the neovascularizations were detected in the vitreous en face maps of OCT angiography. The mean±SD number of local capillary nonperfused areas by OCT angiography and fluorescein angiography was 2.9±1.9 and 2.2±1.8 respectively. The detection of capillary nonperfused areas was significantly better by OCT angiography than fluorescein angiography (P<0.05).
Conclusions :
Our findings show that OCT angiography can be used to evaluate the neovascularization and capillary nonperfused areas in eyes with diabetic retinopathy.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.