Abstract
Purpose :
To compare optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) and fluorescein angiography (FA)for measurement of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) in healthy eyes and in maculopathy eyes, and to evaluate the short-term impact of anti-VEGF treatment on the FAZ area and density in maculopathy patients by sequential OCTA observation.
Methods :
Forty-nine patients (49 eyes) with unaffected eyes and sixty patients (70 eyes) with maculopathy eyes were scanned with OCTA and FA. Superficial and deep FAZ areas recorded by OCTA and FA were independently examined by two observers. In addition, the size and density of FAZ areas in the eyes of 21 patients with maculopathy undergoing intravitreal injection with anti-VEGF drugs were measured by OCTA before injection (baseline), and at 1 hour, 1 week, and 1 month after injection.
Results :
OCTA revealed clear, detailed capillary networks around the FAZ in healthy eyes and in diseased eyes. Inter-observer reproducibility of FAZ area measurements was high for all retina layers in normal eyes by OCTA and FA (CCC>0.9). However, the only high correlation between the measurements by Grader1 and Grader2 was on the OCTA superficial 3 mm×3 mm area and FA in maculopathy eyes (CCC 0.974 0.969). The CCC for OCTA and FA were high for FAZ measurements within a superficial 3 × 3mm area in healthy eyes and maculopathy eyes (CCC=0.974 and 0.938, respectively). In the 21 eyes with maculopathy that received intravitreal anti-VEGF injection, there was no significant difference in the area and density of FAZ (P>0.05) at one month by OCTA, which suggests that anti-VEGF treatment has little effect on FAZ size.
Conclusions :
Compared to FA, OCTA is a more effective multiple-layer imaging technique for detecting changes in FAZ areas in normal and pathological eyes with high repeatability and accuracy.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.