Tortuosity of branch retinal artery is more associated with the genesis and progress of diabetic retinopathy

• Published in: Frontiers in endocrinology (Lausanne) 2022-10, Vol.13, p.972339-972339
• Main Authors: Song, Yunfeng, Zhou, Zheng, Liu, Henan, Du, Runyu, Zhou, Yaoyao, Zhu, Shanshan, Chen, Shuo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: branch retinal vessels; diabetic retinopathy; Endocrinology; fundus imaging; retinal vessel analysis; vascular tortuosity
• ISSN: 1664-2392; 1664-2392
• DOI: 10.3389/fendo.2022.972339

ObjectiveThe purpose of this study is to investigate the potential of using the tortuosity of branch retinal artery as a more promising indicator for early detection and accurate assessment of diabetic retinopathy (DR). Design and methodThe diagnoses, consisting of whether DR or not as well as DR severity, were given by ophthalmologists upon the assessment of those fundus images from 495 diabetic patients. Meanwhile, benefiting from those good contrast and high optical resolution fundus images taken by confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscope, the branch arteries, branch veins, main arteries and main veins in retina can be segmented independently, and the tortuosity values of them were further extracted to investigate their potential correlations with DR genesis and progress based on one-way ANOVA test. ResultsFor both two comparisons, i.e., between non-DR group and DR group as well as among groups with different DR severity levels, larger tortuosity increments were always observed in retinal arteries and the increments in branch retinal vessels were even larger. Furthermore, it was newly found that branch arterial tortuosity was significantly associated with both DR genesis (p=0.030) and DR progress (p