Absolute retinal blood flow in healthy eyes and in eyes with retinal vein occlusion

• Published in: Microvascular research 2024-03, Vol.152, p.104648-104648, Article 104648
• Main Authors: Mautuit, Thibaud, Cunnac, Pierre, Truffer, Frédéric, Anjos, André, Dufrane, Rebecca, Maître, Gilbert, Geiser, Martial, Chiquet, Christophe
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adaptive optics; Blood Flow Velocity; Doppler velocimetry; Fluorescein Angiography - methods; Healthy; Humans; Laser-Doppler Flowmetry; Life Sciences; Ocular blood flow; Regional Blood Flow; Retina; Retinal blood flow; Retinal Vein - diagnostic imaging; Retinal vein occlusion; Retinal Vein Occlusion - diagnosis; Retinal Vessels
• ISSN: 0026-2862; 1095-9319
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mvr.2023.104648

To measure non-invasively retinal venous blood flow (RBF) in healthy subjects and patients with retinal venous occlusion (RVO). The prototype named AO-LDV (Adaptive Optics Laser Doppler Velocimeter), which combines a new absolute laser Doppler velocimeter with an adaptive optics fundus camera (rtx1, Imagine Eyes®, Orsay, France), was studied for the measurement of absolute RBF as a function of retinal vessel diameters and simultaneous measurement of red blood cell velocity. RBF was measured in healthy subjects (n = 15) and patients with retinal venous occlusion (RVO, n = 6). We also evaluated two softwares for the measurement of retinal vessel diameters: software 1 (automatic vessel detection, profile analysis) and software 2 (based on the use of deep neural networks for semantic segmentation of vessels, using a M2u-Net architecture). Software 2 provided a higher rate of automatic retinal vessel measurement (99.5 % of 12,320 AO images) than software 1 (64.9 %) and wider measurements (75.5 ± 15.7 μm vs 70.9 ± 19.8 μm, p