Adaptive optics may help detect diabetic retinopathy sooner
Imaging with adaptive optics showed thickened retinal arteriole walls in patients with early diabetes compared with controls, according to a study presented here at the American Academy of Optometry virtual meeting.
“Adaptive optics ... enables us to correct for the eye’s optical imperfections and allows high resolution imaging of living individual cells in the retina like photoreceptors and individual blood cells,” study author Kaitlyn Sapoznik, OD, said at an academy-sponsored press conference.
“In this study, we looked at the walls and lumen in the retinal arterioles,” she said, which are thickened in patients with diabetes.
Sapoznik imaged the retinal microvasculature of 19 patients with diabetes mellitus and 26 controls with the Indiana adaptive optics scanning laser ophthalmoscope.
“We used semi-automated custom software to measure individual segments, vessels under 50 microns,” she said.
Sapoznik saw increased wall-to-lumen ratios and increased wall thickness in patients with diabetes, she said.
In addition, the wall-to-lumen ratio and arteriole diameter were inversely related, and arteriole structural remodeling is occurring in the vessel wall’s small arterioles even in early stages of disease, she said.
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Sapoznik K. Retinal arteriolar changes in diabetes imaged by AOSLO. Presented at: American Academy of Optometry meeting; October 7-22, 2020; virtual meeting.
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