Abstract
This study investigates the hyaloid vascular regression and its relationship to the retinal and choroidal vascular developments using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). Normal and oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) rat eyes at postnatal day 15, 18, 21, and 24 were longitudinally imaged using OCTA. At each day, two consecutive imaging for visualizing the hyaloid vasculature and the retinal and choroidal vasculatures were conducted. The hyaloid vessel volume and the retinal and choroidal vessel densities were measured. The hyaloid vessel volumes gradually decreased during the regression, although the OIR eyes exhibited large vessel volumes at all time points. A spatial relationship between persistent hyaloid vasculature and retardation of underlying retinal vascular development was observed in the OIR eyes. Furthermore, anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) was administered intravitreally to additional OIR eyes to observe its effect on the vascular regression and development. The VEGF injection to OIR eyes showed reduced persistent hyaloid vessels in the injected eyes as well as in the non-injected fellow eyes. This study presents longitudinal imaging of intraocular vasculatures in the developing eye and shows the utility of OCTA that can be widely used in studies of vascular development and regression and preclinical evaluation of new anti-angiogenic drugs.
Highlights
This study investigates the hyaloid vascular regression and its relationship to the retinal and choroidal vascular developments using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA)
The hyaloid regression is initiated with the apoptosis of vascular endothelial cells and is associated with intraocular macrophages[5,6], vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) level[7,8], and reduced hemodynamic force exerting on the endothelial cells[9]
Visualization of hyaloid vasculature using OCTA.Figure 1 shows images of the hyaloid vasculature observed in an oxygen-induced retinopathy (OIR) eye at P24
Summary
This study investigates the hyaloid vascular regression and its relationship to the retinal and choroidal vascular developments using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). Hyaloid vasculature is one of the major blood supply sources in the developing eye and plays an important role in the growth and maturation of crystalline lens, vitreous, and r etina[1]. It consists of a group of vascular components: hyaloid artery, vasa hyaloidea propria (VHP), and tunica vasculosa lentis (TVL). The whole mount microscopy is utilized for visualizing the entire hyaloid vasculature These techniques, inherently require ex vivo tissues for imaging and cannot capture the dynamic changes of the vessels in individual eyes. An in vivo study using scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO) observed hyaloid vasculature in a mouse eye, showing the vascular regression at multiple time points[20]
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