Correlations Between the Volumes of Fibrovascular Retinal Pigment Epithelial Detachments and the Areas of Type 1 Choroidal Neovascularization in Age-related Macular Degeneration using OCT imaging

Abstract

Purpose : Spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) imaging has been shown to reproducibly measure the volumes of retinal pigment epithelial detachments (PEDs). Swept source OCT angiography (SS-OCTA) is being used to directly visualize choroidal neovascularization (CNV). An automated algorithm for measuring these areas of CNV has been developed and validated against hand-drawn area measurements (submitted for publication). The purpose of this study is to determine if the volumetric measurements of PEDs obtained using SD-OCT imaging can serve as a surrogate measurement for the areas of type 1 CNV measured using SS-OCTA imaging.

Methods : SS-OCTA imaging was performed as part of a prospective ongoing trial that was approved by the institutional review board of the University of Miami. Consents were obtained on all patients enrolled in the study. Eligible eyes contained type 1 CNV associated with minimally serous (< 50%) fibrovascular PEDS secondary to neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) in which at least two qualifying visits were available for analysis. Qualifying visits were defined by the acquisition of images using both the SD-OCT (Cirrus, Carl Zeiss Meditec, Dublin, CA) used to obtain PED volumes and a prototype SS-OCTA instruments (PlexElite 9000, Carl Zeiss Meditec, Dublin, CA) used to obtain the areas of the neovascular lesions.

Results : Three eyes of 3 patients met the eligibility criteria. All the eyes were undergoing treatment with inhibitors of vascular endothelial growth factor. A total of 23 visits were analyzed. A significant statistical correlation was found between PED volumes (mm³) and CNV areas (mm²) (p<0.001, ANCOVA).

Conclusions : In eyes with minimally serous PEDS, the volume of the PED correlated with the actual area of the CNV, which was measured using SS-OCTA. This observation would confirm our previous finding that described how changes in the volume of a PED in eyes undergoing anti-VEGF therapy could serve as a surrogate for changes in the actual size of the type 1 CNV associated with a vascularized PED.

This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2017 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Baltimore, MD, May 7-11, 2017.