OCT angiography by absolute intensity difference applied to normal and diseased human retinas.

Daniel Ruminski,Danuta Bukowska,Maciej Wojtkowski,Bartosz L Sikorski,Grazyna Malukiewicz,Maciej Szkulmowski,Lech Bieganowski,Krzysztof Krawiec

doi:10.1364/boe.6.002738

Abstract

We compare four optical coherence tomography techniques for noninvasive visualization of microcapillary network in the human retina and murine cortex. We perform phantom studies to investigate contrast-to-noise ratio for angiographic images obtained with each of the algorithm. We show that the computationally simplest absolute intensity difference angiographic OCT algorithm that bases only on two cross-sectional intensity images may be successfully used in clinical study of healthy eyes and eyes with diabetic maculopathy and branch retinal vein occlusion.

Highlights

The visualization and assessment of retinal microcirculation is of immense significance for both scientific and clinical purposes because it may be indicative for such pathological conditions asischemia and inflammation
In order to use advantages of absolute complex difference (ACD) and simplicity of speckle variance (SV) method we choose absolute intensity difference (AID) analysis, which helps to better suppress motion artifacts than SV for N > 2 oversampled data without application of additional stabilization step which is in agreement with results from Fig. 2(d).phase variance algorithm (PV) gives again slightly less visibility of small capillaries and here the motion artifacts are less pronounced than the other methods, which confirms our analysis presented in Fig. 2(b), 2(d)
In this contribution we demonstrate comparison between four optical coherence tomography (OCT) angiography techniques: phase variance (PV), absolute complex difference (ACD), speckle variance (SV)and absolute intensity difference (AID)

Summary

Introduction

The visualization and assessment of retinal microcirculation is of immense significance for both scientific and clinical purposes because it may be indicative for such pathological conditions asischemia and inflammation. It is potentially very useful for diagnosis and monitoring of individuals with diabetes, retinal artery and vein occlusion, arterial hypertension, and other vascular disorders. FA allows direct measurement of blood flow in retinal vasculature by recording the fluorescence signal coming from fluorescein delivered intravenously. That is why it reveals the areas of occlusion and non-perfusion. The procedure should not be repeated at short time intervals

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Conclusion