Retinal Microstructure Abnormalities and Segmentation Errors in Optical Coherence Tomography Imaging of Patients with a History of Retinopathy of Prematurity

Abstract

Purpose : To evaluate retinal microstructural abnormalities and segmentation errors from spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) imaging (MM5 protocol of RTVue-100; Optovue, Inc., Fremont, CA) in school-aged children.

Methods : A prospective case-controlled study in a referral medical center. 133 eyes of 133 patients were enrolled. Patients were grouped as those who were treated for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) (ROP-Tx-group); those with spontaneously-regressed ROP (ROP-non-Tx-group); other premature patients (premature group); and full-term age-matched children (full-term group). Retinal microstructural abnormalities and segmentation errors were evaluated by SD-OCT.

Results : The mean age at assessment was 9.5 years (range 4–16 years). The external limiting membrane and the cone outer segment tips (COST) line were least identified in patients of the ROP-Tx-group (65.2% and 47.8%, P = .002 and P < .001, respectively). The visual acuity of the patients did not correlate significantly with the absence of COST line (P = .140) but correlated with the absence of ELM (P < .001). The presence of artifacts, including misidentification of the inner retina, misidentification of the outer retina, out of register artifacts, off-center scans, and degraded scan images, was observed to range from 0.6% to 50.0% in 4 groups of patients. All types of errors occurred more frequently in the ROP-Tx-group than the full-term group (all P < .05).

Conclusions : Retinal microstructural abnormalities were commonly observed in the ROP-Tx-group. The higher segmentation errors in the ROP-Tx-group might be related to microstructural abnormalities. Future studies are needed to investigate the mechanisms for these structural changes.

This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2016 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, Wash., May 1-5, 2016.