Near-Infrared Reflectance Imaging to Detect an Incipient Retinal Arterial Macroaneurysm

Retinal arterial macroaneurysms (RAM) are characterized by a saccular or fusiform dilation of the retinal artery wall. An 84-year-old Caucasian woman with a medical history of poorly controlled hypertension was diagnosed with RAM in the left eye. Previous macular spectral-domain optical coherence tomography images from the patient were available for comparison. Near-infrared reflectance imaging (NIR-R), taken 3 years before, demonstrated a cuff-type thickening of the arteriolar vessel wall at the site of the current complicated RAM that had gone completely unnoticed. These findings suggest that NIR-R may contribute to the detection of early damage of the arterial wall that may predict arterial aneurysm formation in hypertensive patients.