OCTA Metrics Repeatability and Reproducibility in Different Disorders

Retinal imaging is a corner stone in diagnosis of most retinal disorders. Standard imaging techniques e.g. fluorescein angiography and color fundus photography have a lot of limitations including limited resolution, invasive nature in cases of fluorescein angiography, and inability to segment the retina, accordingly, and only 2D image is provided. Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is a recent noninvasive imaging technique that allows for volumetric visualization of eye vasculature. OCTA has shown promise in better elucidating the pathophysiology of several retinal vascular diseases. Swept-source OCTA uses long wavelength ̰ 1,050nm, which can penetrate through deeper layers of the eye and can traverse opacities of media such as cataracts, hemorrhages and vitreous opacities. Optical coherence tomographic angiograms can further be manually or automatically segmented with preprogrammed software to highlight individual layers of the retina, optic nerve head choriocapillaris, and choroid. The user can either analyze en face images extending from the inner limiting membrane to choroid or use automated views to locate a vascular or structural lesion within the retina. Different quantitative metrics has been extracted from enface OCTA images including vessel density, FAZ area, choriocapillaries flow deficit, intercapillary area and fractal dimension. These metrics are helpful in evaluation the retinal perfusion and used by physicians to assess various retinal vascular disorders. Although some previous literatures had discussed the repeatability of OCTA metrics, however, comprehensive evaluation of widely used metrics in various retinal condition has not be done. Additionally, recent data suggest that various methods of calculation of these metrics my yield final different results of the same metric.