Evaluation of Blood-Retinal Barrier Function from Fourier Domain High-Definition Optical Coherence Tomography

Abstract

The aim of the work presented in this paper is to demonstrate the possibility of using a non-invasive imaging technique, the high-definition optical coherence tomography, as a surrogate detector of blood-retinal barrier breakdown. The retinal leakage analyzer is currently the only available technique to map the blood-retinal barrier function, a structure affected by diabetes, one of the most frequent cases in clinical practice.Nevertheless, it requires dedicated instrumentation and skilled personnel and is used only in the clinical research environment. Recently launched optical coherence devices, of the spectral or Fourier domain type, are able to scan the human retina at high rates and with high depth resolution providing users with unprecedented detailed retinal structure images. Besides this structural information, in this work we demonstrate that information on blood-retinal barrier function is also present, opening the perspective of using these non-invasive high-definition imaging devices to access it.