Entoptic foveal avascular zone measurement and diabetic retinopathy.
BACKGROUND
Entoptic visualization of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) provides a noninvasive method for measurement of the FAZ. To determine if repeatability of measurement with this technique is good enough to monitor changes in diabetic retinopathy, we quantify (1) the repeatability of entoptic FAZ measurement in healthy subjects and (2) the relationship between measured FAZ diameter and the severity of retinopathy.


METHODS
(1) To determine FAZ measurement repeatability, 10 healthy adults entoptically measured their FAZ diameters in 11 separate testing sessions. (2) In a separate experiment, 53 patients with varying levels of diabetic retinopathy and 21 control subjects used a vascular entoptoscope to measure their FAZ diameters.


RESULTS
The disease-related increase in FAZ diameter is large (approximately 400 microm) compared to the repeatability of the entoptic measurement within a subject (SD approximately 35 microm).


CONCLUSIONS
Entoptic measurements have the repeatability necessary to reliably monitor increases in FAZ diameter of the magnitude of those induced by diabetes.
Hilmantel
G
G
Department of Ophthalmology, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, 78284-6230, USA. hilmantel@uthscsa.edu
Applegate
R A
RA
van Heuven
W A
WA
Stowers
S P
SP
Bradley
A
A
Lee
B L
BL
D000328:Adult; D003930:Diabetic Retinopathy / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D005584:Fovea Centralis / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D055095:Optics and Photonics; D009907:Optometry / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D014788:Vision, Entoptic