Abstract
Retinal vessels show various biological temporal variations that can impact diagnosis using a static vessel analysis. In this study, Mayer waves in the retinal vessel diameter and arterial blood pressure (BP) signals were characterized, and the temporal correlation between these two modalities was investigated. The arterial and venous vessel diameters and arterial BP were recorded simultaneously on human subjects. The obtained vessel diameters showed vasomotion amplitudes over time. The vessel diameter and BP signals contained multiple signals in the frequency domain and varied over time. The signal characteristics were similar within the measurements. The BP and arterial and venous vessel diameters were correlated. The highest correlation values between the signals were observed for shifts of 1 or 0 periods. The spectrum and amplitudes of the Mayer waves showed a high variability. The Mayer waves in the retinal vessel diameters showed the same characteristics as those in the arterial BP. A temporal dependency between the oscillations in the arterial BP and retinal vessel diameters was shown.
Highlights
Static vessel analysis (SVA) is a noninvasive tool for the risk evaluation of cardiac diseases based on retinal vessel diameters analyzed in fundus images
The artery diameters are combined into a central retinal artery equivalent (CRAE), and the vein diameters are combined to a central retinal vein equivalent (CRVE) according to the formulas developed by Parr and Spears (1974a,b)
We evaluated the variations in the frequency ranges of Mayer waves in the arterial and venous retinal vessel diameters as well as in the arterial blood pressure (BP) in humans
Summary
Static vessel analysis (SVA) is a noninvasive tool for the risk evaluation of cardiac diseases based on retinal vessel diameters analyzed in fundus images. Studies have shown a dependency between the artery-to-vein ratio (AVR) and the risk for cardiovascular diseases. Correlations to hypertension (Ikram et al, 2006a,b), stroke (Wong et al, 2001), and cardiovascular mortality (Wang et al, 2007) have been verified. Correlations to diabetes (Wong et al, 2002) and obesity (Wang et al, 2006; Hanssen et al, 2012) have been shown. The diameters of multiple retinal arteries and veins are measured in a specified area around the optic disk in a single fundus image. The AVR is calculated as the quotient of CRAE and CRVE
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