Texture analysis shows interocular retina asymmetries in women not existing in men

Abstract

Aims/Purpose: Recent research has demonstrated that retinal texture is a valuable source of biomarkers for neurodegeneration. Previous studies have examined the layer thickness of the neuroretina in women and men as measured from optical coherence tomography (OCT) data. The effect of sex‐based retinal interocular differences remains relatively unexplored. This study looked into texture metrics from OCT data of healthy adult individuals to determine if interocular differences are related to sex.Methods: Grey‐level co‐occurrence matrix features were computed from mean‐value fundus images from the six layers of the neuroretina. These features were tested separately for group mean differences between the female and male participants' right and left eyes. A pairwise correlation analysis was first performed to exclude similar features. The non‐correlated features were tested for normality, and a paired‐sample t‐test or a signed rank test was applied accordingly to evaluate the group mean differences. Due to the many pairwise tests, three different pairwise correction methods were applied: Bonferroni, Benjamini–Hochberg, and the False Discovery Rate.Results: Initial uncorrected results showed that interocular retinal texture asymmetries were mainly present in women and with a larger effect size than in men. After correction, except for the highly conservative Bonferroni method, the results revealed that texture differences were only present in the female group, while the eyes of men were similar.Conclusions: Our work suggests that structural patterns in the right and left eyes manifest differently in females and males, raising the question of why such differences occur and how they might vary over the lifespan, both in healthy individuals and in patients diagnosed with neurodegenerative disorders. In addition, it further emphasizes the need for accurate control in studies that use both eyes.