Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) enables a non-invasive, comprehensive assessment of coronary artery disease, and artificial intelligence (AI) offers the potential to improve CCTA image interpretation. This study aimed to evaluate the performance of an AI-powered method for automatic plaque quantification from CCTA, with optical coherence tomography (OCT) as reference standard. Patients who underwent CCTA within 6 months prior to OCT were retrospectively enrolled. AI-assisted automatic plaque quantification was performed on CCTA with specific plaque composition classification based on adaptive Hounsfield unit thresholds. Qualitative high-risk plaque features were also assessed. Automated co-registration of CCTA and OCT was performed with the link of invasive coronary angiography. A total of 91 patients with 153 co-registered lesions were evaluated. The AI-assisted automatic CCTA analysis showed significant correlations with OCT for quantifying plaque volume/burden and different plaque compositions (all P values <0.001); of which, the correlation coefficient for plaque volume was 0.84. Vulnerable plaque, defined as lipid-to-cap ratio >0.33 on OCT, was identified in 39 (25.5%) lesions. CCTA-derived plaque volume >82.5 mm3 [odds ratio (OR), 9.39], maximal plaque burden >76.4% (OR, 3.70), lipidic tissue volume >16.3 mm³ (OR, 4.42), all P < 0.001, and high-risk plaque features ≥2 (OR, 2.70, P = 0.009) were independent predictors of OCT-derived vulnerable plaques. The average time for automatic CCTA plaque quantification was 1.8 min per patient. The novel AI-powered method facilitated fully automatic plaque quantification and correlated well with co-registered OCT.

Cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) is a leading cause of graft failure following pediatric heart transplantation (HT). Early detection could improve long-term outcomes, but conventional coronary angiography often misses early-stage disease. Optical coherence tomography (OCT), a high-resolution intravascular imaging modality, may enable earlier and more sensitive CAV detection. This retrospective study analyzed pediatric HT recipients who underwent OCT between 2012 and 2024. OCT-derived maximal intima thickness (MIT) and cross-sectional area ratios were correlated with coronary angiography findings, hemodynamic data, CAV risk factors, and immunosuppressive regimens. Longitudinal analysis was performed in patients with serial OCT. In 214 examinations (386 vessels) from 67 patients (median age 3.1years, IQR 1.8-8.2, 49% female, median 5.1years post-HT, IQR 2.6-9.4), OCT-detected CAV (MIT≥0.3mm) was present in 31.9% of vessels versus 8.0% detected by angiography. MIT correlated with recipient and donor age, donor-recipient age difference, episodes of antibody-mediated rejection and was higher in adult donor grafts. Everolimus therapy was associated with significant lower MIT (p<0.001). Over time, 73% of grafts showed OCT-CAV with earlier onset (p=0.037) and higher incidence (p=0.005) in vessels from adult donors. Presence of CAV by angiography or OCT was associated with increased graft loss or dysfunction (log rank p=0.044, HR 4.21, 95%CI 1.16-15.28). OCT detects early-stage CAV in pediatric heart transplant recipients with substantially greater sensitivity than angiography. Everolimus may mitigate early CAV progression. OCT offers significant potential for early detection and risk stratification.

En Face Optical Coherence Tomography and OCT Angiography in the Pathoanatomy of Inflammatory Macular Disease.

Calpain-1 C2L domain peptide protects retinal photoreceptor cells in rhodopsin P347L transgenic rabbits.

The mechanisms of luminal narrowing after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) with directional coronary atherectomy (DCA) and drug-coated balloon (DCB) remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the pattern and mechanisms of luminal narrowing after DCA/DCB using optical coherence tomography (OCT). Patients who underwent DCA/DCB for de novo lesions and serial OCT imaging at 3, 6, and 18 months were evaluated to determine the pattern of luminal narrowing. Among 40 patients who had follow-up (F/U) OCT at 3 months post-PCI, 33 and 23 patients had F/U at 6 and 18 months, respectively. Thirty-six of the 40 (90.0%) cases exhibited a layered pattern at the 3-month F/U, 31 of 33 (93.9%) at the 6-month F/U, and 22 of 23 (95.7%) at the 18-month F/U. Layer progression was identified in 21 of 33 (63.6%) and 4 of 23 (17.4%) at the 6- and 18-month F/Us, respectively. The patients with layer progression tended to have a higher prevalence of diabetes (16.7% vs 52.4%, p = 0.067), a lower rate of dual-antithrombotic therapy (DATT) use (58.3% vs 19.0%, p = 0.052) between the 3- and 6-month F/Us, and a significantly higher rate of no or low-intensity statin use (0.0% vs 41.7%, p = 0.037) between the 6- and 18-month F/Us. In Conclusion, layer progression and luminal narrowing occurred mainly during the first 6 months after DCA/DCB. Patients with luminal narrowing tended to have a higher prevalence of diabetes, standard DATT duration, and no or low-intensity statin use.

To determine the maximum extent of corneal thinning induced solely by dehydration and to establish the threshold at which corneal lysis begins, thereby refining therapeutic indications, with the aim of improving clinical management. Dehydration was induced in 28 corneas, after 4 ex vivo experimental models. Corneal thickness was regularly measured using swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT). Histological analysis was performed on 14 of the corneas, with computer-based counting of collagen lamellae. The remaining 14 corneas were rehydrated and remeasured using OCT. Regardless of the model, all corneas exhibited sectoral thinning, clinically resembling corneal dellen. With the most efficient dehydration model, the average minimum pachymetry was 102 ± 30 μm, with minimal values down as low as 49 μm. Computerized histological analysis confirmed that this thinning reflected a greater density of collagen lamellae and not a real loss of collagen. After rehydration, OCT showed a resolution of corneal thinning in all cases. Corneal dellen thinning reflects the compaction of collagen fibers secondary to localized dehydration. Dehydration alone thinned the cornea to an average of 102 μm, and in some cases, it became as low as 49 μm. Above this threshold, corneal rehydration is sufficient to achieve full recovery.

Efficacy of InP/ZnSe/ZnS quantum dots with antibiotics in the treatment of multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa keratitis: Preclinical studies.

Ethyl ferulate suppresses choroidal neovascularization by accelerating Keap1 degradation through the inhibition of PSMD14-mediated deubiquitination.

Lissajous multi-modal endomicroscopy with optical coherence tomography and confocal fluorescence microscopy

Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) and optical coherence tomography (OCT) are complementary imaging modalities to assess atherosclerosis in vivo. Combining both modalities in a single imaging system has been shown to improve the characterization of vulnerable plaques that are likely to cause acute coronary events. However, fundamental differences in tissue sensitivities and acquisition protocols make the registration of sequences challenging. Anatomical landmarks used to align IVUS and OCT sequences can be masked or lack visual similarity between modalities which renders manual alignment time-consuming and prone to observer variability, limiting its clinical use. Existing methods impose strict frame-level correspondences leading to instability in low information regions, and rely on a two-step registration process that compounds alignment errors. We propose IntraCross, a novel graph matching framework that learns partial assignments between landmarks rather than enforcing rigid frame-by-frame matching, enabling flexible correspondences while rejecting unmatchable landmarks. This is the first method to perform both temporal and rotational registration simultaneously, aligning with clinical workflows. We extend existing partial matching techniques from 2D to 3D sequences and incorporate a temporal prior to regularize the matching process. Testing in 77 vessels from 22 patients showed a high agreement with expert analysts (Williams Index=1.1; p=0.62, 0.89, 0.07) and our approach outperforms existing methods reported in the literature for circumferential registration (p=0.01, 0.04).

FGF21 protects retinal pigment epithelium from sodium iodate-induced injury: Association with inhibition of ferroptosis and the NRF2/GPX4 pathway.

IL-24 regulates corneal inflammation and fibrosis in fungal keratitis via the caspase-11/gasdermin D pathway.

The retinal nerve fiber layer mean thickness in patients with early Parkinson's disease reflects striatal dopamine function.

Changes in choroidal thickness are currently used to predict future refractive error development but there is incomplete knowledge about the communication between choroid and sclera. We studied how choroidal thickness changes interact with scleral thickness changes and how the abundance of dopamine (DA)- and all-trans retinoic acid (atRA)-synthetizing choroidal cells varies when choroidal thickness is altered by drugs. Changes in choroidal thickness were induced by a single intravitreal injection in the morning of the muscarinic antagonist atropine, the DA agonist apomorphine or the DA antagonist spiperone. Thickness of the choroid and the scleral layers was measured by spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT). Immunocytochemistry was used to study the distribution of dopamine-synthetizing structures in the choroid and their colocalisation with retinaldehyde dehydrogenase 2 (RADLH2), the key synthetizing enzyme of atRA. (1) Both atropine and apomorphine increased choroidal thickness over the day while spiperone resulted in a decrease. (2) For apomorphine and spiperone, choroidal thickness changes were positively correlated with thickness changes in both the cartilaginous and fibrous layers of the sclera. With atropine, only the cartilaginous layer thickened. (3) DA was co-localized with RALDH2 in stromal cells in the choroid in a few cases but the numbers of double-stained cells increased massively after drug injections. (4) RALDH2-immunoreactivity (indicating atRA activity) increased, no matter whether the choroid and the sclera thickened or thinned. Following drug injections, thickness changes of choroid and sclera were correlated and occurred without phase delay. Numbers of DA and RALDH2 co-expressing cells in the choroid increased. Choroidal dopaminergic cells that synthesize atRA appear to act as activators of scleral metabolic activity during both scleral growth stimulation and inhibition.

Integration of various sources of information for prediction of disease progression is an unmet need in glaucoma diagnostics. We designed a deep learning-based prognostic model incorporating clinical and structural data for forecasting functional glaucoma progression and compared its performance to clinicians. Retrospective, comparative cohort study of prognostic accuracy. We included 1599 eyes (908 patients) with definite or suspected glaucoma with ≥5 24-2 visual fields (VF) and 3 or more years of follow-up. VF mean deviation (MD) rates of change were estimated with linear regression. Sequential MD rates of change were estimated with each series spanning only 5 years of follow-up. VF progression was declared when four sequential statistically significant negative MD slopes were observed, and slope for the entire follow-up was significant. A convolutional neural network pretrained on ImageNet was designed to predict VF progression using baseline clinical and demographic data, disc photographs, and optical coherence tomography-derived global and sectoral retinal nerve fiber layer and macular thickness measurements. In addition, average intraocular pressure and treatment information during follow-up were put into the model. The same data for a subset of patients was provided to two clinicians to independently predict future progression. The model was validated on a separate cohort of eyes in which optical coherence tomography imaging was done with a different device (291 eyes). Model's area under receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC), accuracy, and area under the precision and recall curves. Average (SD) baseline MD and number of VF exams were -3.5 (4.9) dB and 10.1 (4.7). 399 eyes (25%) deteriorated. The best-performing model incorporated baseline disc photographs, and retinal nerve fiber layer and macular thickness: AUC, 0.839 (0.771-0.906), accuracy, 76.0% (62.0%-85.0%), and area under the precision and recall curves, 0.558 (0.385-0.733). Deep learning model significantly outperformed clinical graders (AUC : 0.629 [0.531-0738], P < .001 and 0.680 [0.584-0.776], P = .001, for grader one and two, respectively). Model performance was similar on the validation cohort (AUC: 0.754 [0.671-0.837], and accuracy: 77% [71%-82%], respectively, P = .122). The model performed well when predicting fast-progression, defined as MD rate <-1.0 dB/y (AUC: 0.869 [0.792-0.947]). Our newly designed deep learning model can combine baseline demographic and clinical data with widely available structural measurements and provide clinically relevant information for the prediction of glaucoma progression.

Single-cell transcriptomics combined with spatial proteomics defines phagocytes type-specific immune regulation in diabetic cataract.

To explore the repeatability, reproducibility, and agreement in the measurement of the choroidal vascularity index (CVI) for different swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT) devices and between OCT and OCT angiography (OCTA) images. Two swept-source OCT imaging systems, VG200I and Topcon DRI OCT Triton, were used to capture OCT and OCTA images in triplicate. The first and third images were taken by one operator, and the second image was taken by another operator. The built-in software was used to calculate the CVI from the OCTA images (CVI-OCTA), and a custom-designed algorithm was used to calculate the CVI from the OCT images (CVI-OCT). Repeatability and reproducibility were assessed with the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and agreement between devices and between OCT and OCTA were evaluated with Bland-Altman analysis. Sixty-eight eyes from 35 adults (17 females) were included in the analysis. The average age of the participants was 23.6±2.3y, with an average spherical equivalent refraction of -3.08±2.47 D and an average AL of 25.21±1.20 mm. Both OCT devices demonstrated high repeatability and reproducibility in measuring the CVI-OCTA (all ICCs>0.894 across five choroidal regions) and CVI-OCT (all ICCs>0.838). Furthermore, the between-device agreement in measuring the CVI-OCT was good [mean difference (MD) ranging from -2.32% to -3.07%], but that in measuring the CVI-OCTA was poor (MD, 1.48% to -7.43%). Additionally, the between-imaging agreement (CVI-OCTA versus CVI-OCT) was poor for both devices (Triton, MD, 6.05% to 12.68%; VG200I, MD, 6.67% to 12.09%). Both OCT devices and the two analytical methods demonstrate good stability. The inter-device consistency of CVI-OCT is good, while the inter-device consistency of CVI-OCTA and the consistency between the two analytical methods in the same device are both poor.

To investigate the association between anti-DFS70 antibody positivity and ocular parameters, specifically, the choroidal vascularity index (CVI) and other optical coherence tomography (OCT) metrics, in a healthy population. This age- and sex-matched case-control study enrolled 84 healthy individuals with positive anti-DFS70 antibody findings and 84 healthy negative controls. All participants underwent detailed ophthalmological examinations, including biometry and OCT imaging. Anti-DFS70 positivity was determined by indirect immunofluorescence and scored semi-quantitatively (1+ to 3+). CVI was calculated from OCT images using a standardized protocol with Image J software. Statistical analyses, including Student's t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, Spearman correlation, and logistic regression, were used to compare groups and identify predictive factors. The individuals who tested positive and negative for anti-DFS70 included in the study were matched for age (median age=47y) and sex (F:M=7:1). CVI was significantly lower in the anti-DFS70-positive group compared to the negative group. A higher anti-DFS70 antibody titer was significantly associated with decreased subfoveal and nasal choroidal thickness (P=0.016 and P=0.014, respectively). In univariate regression analysis, CVI was the only significant predictor of anti-DFS70 positivity [odds ratio (OR)=0.02, P=0.025]. Multivariate analysis revealed a positive correlation between macular thinning outside the subfoveal area and anti-DFS70 status (P<0.05). Our study demonstrates a novel association between anti-DFS70 antibody positivity and reduced choroidal vascularity in healthy individuals. These findings suggest that anti-DFS70 antibodies may be associated with subtle choroidal vascular changes detectable by OCT, even in asymptomatic individuals. Further longitudinal research is warranted to clarify the underlying mechanisms and long-term clinical significance of these ocular changes.

To evaluate the differences and consistency of vault measurements obtained by Scheimpflug tomography (Pentacam), anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT, CASIA II), and ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM) following implantable collamer lens (ICL) V4c implantation. Vault measurements were acquired using three modalities: Pentacam, CASIA II AS-OCT, and UBM. Repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to compare the vault values obtained by the three devices. The correlation and consistency of measurements among the three instruments were assessed using the Pearson correlation coefficient, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and Bland-Altman plots. This retrospective study enrolled 210 myopic eyes of 210 patients (158 women and 52 men) who underwent ICL implantation: 108 eyes had a myopic ICL V4c implanted, and 102 eyes had a toric ICL V4c implanted. The mean vault values measured by Pentacam, CASIA II, and UBM were 452.64±204.20 µm, 538.57±203.54 µm, and 560.95±227.54 µm, respectively, with statistically significant differences among the three groups (P<0.05). Pearson correlation analysis showed strong positive correlations between vault values measured by different instruments (all P<0.001). ICC results indicated good consistency among the three measurement modalities (all P<0.001). Stratified analysis revealed that when the vault value was ≤250 µm, the correlation and consistency of measurements across the three instruments were lower than those in the medium and high vault subgroups. Vault values measured by Pentacam are lower than those obtained by CASIA II and UBM, with UBM yielding the highest mean vault values. Measurements from the three instruments are not interchangeable but can serve as mutual references due to their significant correlation and good overall consistency. Pentacam and CASIA II demonstrate the highest consistency in vault measurement. Notably, when the vault value is ≤250 µm, the consistency between Pentacam and the other two instruments decreases significantly.

To investigate the sex-specific correlation between systemic factors and retinal neurovascular alterations in individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) who do not exhibit signs of diabetic retinopathy (DR). A cohort participant without DR diagnosed with T1DM, underwent comprehensive ophthalmologic evaluation, optical coherence tomography angiography retinal structural and microvascular density analysis, and systemic parameter assessment. Multiple linear regression analysis was used to investigate the impact of systemic parameters on retinal alterations in distinct gender groups. A total of 182 individuals were included, consisting of 85 males (mean age 23.28±12.75y) and 97 females (mean age 22.98±13.68y). Males exhibited significantly greater thickness in both the internal retinal layer and the entire retina compared to females (P<0.01), whereas females had higher densities of deep retinal vessels and choroidal capillaries (P<0.05). Additionally, glycemic control was found to have a notable influence on retinal thickness in males (P<0.05), while insulin function had a more pronounced impact on retinal structure in females (P<0.01). Furthermore, a significant correlation was observed between thyroid function markers and retinal parameters in both male and female (P<0.05). Sex differences in alterations in retinal structure and microcirculation are observed in individuals with T1DM prior to the development of clinical DR, with a noted association between these changes and systemic parameters.