Choroidal thinning can be assessed through facial video analysis

Different features of skin are associated with various medical conditions and provide opportunities to evaluate and monitor body health. This study created a strategy to assess choroidal thinning through the video analysis of facial skin.

Videos capturing the entire facial skin were collected from 48 participants with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and 12 healthy individuals. These facial videos were analyzed using video-based trans-angiosomes imaging photoplethysmography (TaiPPG) to generate facial imaging biomarkers that were correlated with choroidal thickness (CT) measurements. The CT of all patients was determined using swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT).

The results revealed the relationship between relative blood pulsation amplitude (BPA) in three typical facial angiosomes (cheek, side-forehead, and mid-forehead) and the average macular CT (r=0.48, P<0.001; r=-0.56, P<0.001; r=-0.40, P<0.01). When considering a diagnostic threshold of 200 µm for CT, the newly developed facial video analysis tool effectively distinguished between cases of choroidal thinning and normal cases, yielding areas under the curve of 0.75, 0.79, and 0.69.

These findings shed light on the connection between choroidal blood flow and facial skin hemodynamics, which suggests the potential for predicting vascular diseases through widely accessible skin imaging data.