Abstract
.Cataract is one of the most prevalent causes of blindness around the world. Understanding the mechanisms of cataract development and progression is important for clinical diagnosis and treatment. Cold cataract has proven to be a robust model for cataract formation that can be easily controlled in the laboratory. There is evidence that the biomechanical properties of the lens can be significantly changed by cataract. Therefore, early detection of cataract, as well as evaluation of therapies, could be guided by characterization of lenticular biomechanical properties. In this work, we utilized optical coherence elastography (OCE) to monitor the changes in biomechanical properties of ex vivo porcine lenses during formation of cold cataract. Elastic waves were induced in the porcine lenses by a focused micro air-pulse while the lenses were cooled, and the elastic wave velocity was translated to Young’s modulus of the lens. The results show an increase in the stiffness of the lens due to formation of the cold cataract (from to ). These results show a relation between lens opacity and stiffness and demonstrate that OCE can assess lenticular biomechanical properties and may be useful for detecting and potentially characterizing cataracts.
Highlights
Cataract is clouding of the crystalline lens that can severely impair vision with faded colors, blurry vision, halos around light, and poor night vision
We have demonstrated that the biomechanical properties of the crystalline lens can be measured in situ and quantified variations in the stiffness of mammalian lenses as a function of age and intraocular pressure.[25,27,28,29]
The optical coherence elastography (OCE) system was based on a home-built spectral domain Optical coherence tomography (OCT) (SD-OCT) system and an air-pulse excitation system, as shown in Fig. 1.33,34 The SD-OCT system utilized a superluminescent diode light source with a central wavelength of 840 nm, bandwidth of 49 nm, and output power of 18 mW
Summary
Cataract is clouding of the crystalline lens that can severely impair vision with faded colors, blurry vision, halos around light, and poor night vision. The specific underlying mechanism of cataract formation is still unknown, but there are reports that the stiffness of the cataract lenses in humans is significantly higher than that of normal lenses.[3]
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