Abstract
Elongated axial length of the eye increases the morbidity of glaucoma. Myopia also associates with elongated axial length, and such ellipsoid shape of the eyeball strongly contributes its pathogenesis. Morphological features of the eyeballs, which could be important factors for developing glaucoma, have not been well described. The aim of this study was to investigate the three-dimensional (3D) topographic features of glaucomatous eyeballs with/without myopia to evaluate the potential of those features for predicting glaucoma. Using a 3.0-tesla MRI, volume-isotropic turbo-spin-echo acquisition T2-weighted images were obtained from 55 patients with glaucoma and 22 controls to delineate the eyeballs. Eyeball volumes, axial lengths and transverse lengths were semi-automatically calculated and compared between four groups: normal, myopia, glaucoma, and glaucoma with myopia. Both glaucoma and myopia increased the eyeball volume compared to the normal eyes. An increased anisotropy ratio (axial/transversus length) was observed in myopic eyes compared to normal, whereas in the glaucomatous eyes, with or without myopia, no increase in anisotropy ratio was observed. Increasing volume of eyes can be caused by myopia and glaucoma. Myopic eyes were ellipsoid in shape, but there was less anisotropy and a near-spherical shape in glaucomatous eyes, even in glaucomatous myopic eyes.
Highlights
Glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness worldwide, and the number of patients is still growing[1], but its underlying mechanism remains unclear
Excluding participants with PPG, the glaucoma stage was significantly correlated with eyeball volume (p = 0.36, P < 0.0001), axial length (p = 0.26, P = 0.0052), and transverse length (p = 0.31, P = 0.0006), but there was no correlation with the anisotropy ratio (p = 0.03, P = 0.12)
We reported the feasibility of determining the characteristic shape of glaucomatous eyes using 3D high-resolution Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), with quantitative analysis
Summary
Glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness worldwide, and the number of patients is still growing[1], but its underlying mechanism remains unclear. Elongated axial length of the eye has been implicated to increase the morbidity of glaucoma[3,4,5,6]. Given these observations, morphological features of the eyeball, including the retrobulbar structure in the orbit, could be important factors contributing to the development of glaucoma. The aim of this study was to investigate the topographic features of whole eyeballs with glaucoma and/or myopia, using high-resolution 3D T2-weighted images, with anatomical image-segmentation for precise geometric and volumetric analyses and to evaluate the potential of those features for predicting glaucoma
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