Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 23, 2025
Full-Field Optical Coherence Microscopy for Histology-Like Analysis of Stromal Features in Corneal Grafts
Published on: October 21, 2022
Epithelial and stromal profiles of post-laser vision correction ectasia by OCT
Nan-Ji Lu1, Robert Herber, Lin Wang
1From the Department of Ophthalmology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China (Lu, L. Wang); Department of Ophthalmology, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, Dresden, Germany (Herber); Emmetropia Mediterranean Eye Institute, Heraklion, Crete, Greece (Aslanides); National Clinical Research Center for Ocular Diseases, Eye Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China (Ai, Q.-M. Wang, Cui); Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Antwerp, Wilrijk, Belgium (Rozema); Department of Ophthalmology, Antwerp University Hospital, Edegem, Belgium (Rozema).
Purpose:
To investigate changes in the epithelium and stroma in patients with post-laser vision correction (LVC) ectasia using spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and to compare these changes with those observed in post-LVC stable eyes.
Setting:
Eye Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.
Designs:
Retrospective case-control study.
Methods:
Scheimpflug tomography and SD-OCT were performed on post-LVC stable and ectasia eyes. The postoperative remodeling pattern of epithelium and stroma was described. All SD-OCT machine-derived parameters were evaluated based on their receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity, and specificity to discriminate between post-LVC stable and ectasia eyes.
Results:
111 eyes from 111 post-LVC stable patients (41 post-trans-photorefractive keratectomy [transPRK] eyes, 34 post-laser in situ keratomileusis [LASIK] eyes, and 36 post-small incision lenticule extraction [SMILE] eyes) and 23 eyes from 23 post-LVC ectasia patients (1 post-transPRK ectasia eye, 1 post-sub-Bowman keratomileusis ectasia eye, 1 post-laser-assisted subepithelial keratomileusis ectasia eye, and 20 post-LASIK ectasia eyes). The unique epithelium remodeling pattern was observed in both post-LVC stable and ectasia eyes, in the latter as a "horseshoe"-like pattern. The top 3 ranked AUC ROC SD-OCT parameters were all derived from epithelium, including epithelium 5 mm superior-inferior (cutoff value = -0.675, AUC = 0.956), epithelium 5 mm inferior (cutoff value = 52.41, AUC = 0.937), and epithelium thickness range (cutoff value = -23.685, AUC = 0.936).
Conclusions:
The characteristic remodeling pattern and the machine-derived SD-OCT parameters describing the epithelium remodeling of post-LVC ectasia could potentially be used for its diagnosis.
