Optical Coherence Tomography: imaging of age related maculopathy

Background Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of severe vision loss in the developed world in patients over 60 years. AMD is characterized by two distinct forms: dry and wet. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-invasive, useful and reproducible diagnostic tool that provides cross-sectional images of retina and has a primary role for diagnostic and therapeutic management of AMD. The spread of antiVEGF intravitreal injection for therapy of wet AMD further emphasized the role of OCT for treatment algorithms allowing a precise characterization of lesions and strict non-invasive retinal monitoring in the follow-up. Main indications and limits of OCT will be discussed as well as the various morphological presentations of dry and wet AMD underlying retinal changes before and after therapy. Materials and methods We analyzed 500 eyes of 270 patients affected by dry or wet AMD that underwent a complete ophthalmological examination and OCT scan with two different machines. A time domain OCT (TD-OCT, Stratus OCT3, Carl Zeiss Meditec, Dublin, CA) and a Fourier Domain OCT (FD-OCT, RTVue-100, Optovue, Fremont, CA). We used a radial line pattern scan algorithm with TD-OCT (see Figure 1) and radial and raster scan with FD-OCT with additional tridimensional reconstruction (see Figure 2).