Acute central serous chorioretinopathy: a correlation study between fundus autofluorescence and spectral-domain OCT

To evaluate the correlation between fundus autofluorescence (FAF) and spectral-domain OCT (SD-OCT) morphological analysis in eyes with acute central serous chorioretinopathy (CSCR).

Thirty-one patients with a first episode of CSCR and symptom duration of less than 6 weeks were prospectively enrolled. FAF and SD-OCT examination were performed at baseline and at 2-month intervals. Main outcome measure was the correlation between FAF and SD-OCT retinal morphology.

At baseline, 30/31 and 29/31 eyes showed a macular hypo-AF, corresponding to the neurosensory retinal detachment (SRD), on shortwave-FAF (SW-FAF) and near-infrared-FAF (NIR-FAF), respectively. While the SRD resolved, both FAF techniques showed a granular hyper-AF in 31 eyes. At first examination, SD-OCT confirmed the SRD with a photoreceptor outer-segment (OS) elongation in all cases. During SRD resolution, the photoreceptor layer appeared thicker and fragmented. Multiple hyper-reflective precipitates were detected in the outer plexiform and nuclear layer and between the photoreceptors and appeared colocalized with the hyper-AF dots composing the granular hyper-AF. After SRD resolution, the hypo-AF area reverted to a normal pattern on SW-FAF in all eyes and in 25/31 on NIR-FAF. Examination at 12 months showed that the granular hyper-AF was still detectable in 54 % eyes, whereas 6/31 eyes showed hypo-AF dots on NIR-FAF. On SD-OCT, the junction IS/OS was identifiable in 11/31 eyes soon after the SRD resolution and appeared completely restored in all patients at the final visit.

The simultaneous acquisition of FAF and SD-OCT provides detailed findings of retinal abnormalities of CSCR and may help to understand the evolving process linked to CSCR.