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Spectral domain OCT holds promise for management of dry AMD
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WAIKOLOA, Hawaii — Spectral domain optical coherence tomography should be investigated and utilized for the management of dry age-related macular degeneration, a speaker here said.
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"After the advances with Lucentis (ranibizumab, Genentech) and Avastin (bevacizumab, Genentech), patients, industry and the investment community are looking at new treatments for dry AMD," Carmen A. Puliafito, MD, MBA, said. "The big problem is how to assess the treatment effect, looking at an intervention that may have to be done over a long period of time and a disease which is slow moving."
Dr. Puliafito said that Snellen acuity is not an effective primary endpoint in studies and suggested spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD OCT) as a tool with the "unique capability of creating documentation" that is detailed beyond fundus photography.
"This is a very heterogeneous picture," he said, showing an SD OCT image. "How will all these things change and how will we measure them? It's a big problem."
With the latest SD OCT technology, Dr. Puliafito showed this problem is ameliorated with automated segmentation to match the top of the retina to the bottom of the retina, retinal pigment epithelium images, retinal thickness images and correlation and compilation of the gathered data.
"These eyes are packed full of abnormalities that you cannot see by simply looking at the fundus or looking at a color fundus photograph," Dr. Puliafito said. "SD OCT permits quantitative analysis of dry AMD pathologies and this technology will be useful for assessment of new therapies."