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Association found between autofluorescence, outer retinal organization
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PHOENIX – Case reports presented in a poster here at Academy 2012 showed that in 20 patients with outer retinal disease, hypo autofluorescence was associated with retinal pigment epithelium and photoreceptor integrity line damage, and hyper autofluorescence corresponded to an attenuated PIL and normal RPE.
Poster authors Daniel Epshtein and Jerome Sherman, OD, FAAO, explained that fundus autofluorescence (FAF) indirectly visualizes the integrity of the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) through the autofluorescence (AF) of lipofuscin within the RPE. RPE stress leads to increased levels of lipofuscin and hyper AF, they said, while loss of RPE tissue leads to a reduction in lipofuscin and, therefore, hypo AF.
The authors said their case series showed that range of AF patterns correlated to spectral domain optical coherence tomography images, which are typically used to analyze retinal structure.
Ten cases of retinitis pigmentosa showed hyper AF that corresponded to a normal RPE, the authors reported in the poster. However, the photoreceptor integrity line (PIL) was attenuated, and “damage to the PIL is most likely due to the progressive damage of photoreceptor cells in retinitis pigmentosa,” they said.
The researchers obtained both SD-OCT and FA images of a patient with central serous chorioretinopathy and found that zones of hypo AF were associated with an intact RPE and damaged PIL, while a ring of hyper AF correlated with damage to the RPE and PIL.
“Based on the above cases,” they said in the poster,” a clinical association between AF and outer retinal organization has been revealed.”