Tissue Optics and Microcirculation Imaging Facility, National Biophotonics and Imaging Platform, School of Physics, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland.
J Biophotonics. 2020 Jun;13(6):e201960234. doi: 10.1002/jbio.201960234. Epub 2020 Feb 27.
Corneal cross-linking (CXL) using ultraviolet-A (UVA) irradiation with a riboflavin photosensitizer has grown from an interesting concept to a practical clinical treatment for corneal ectatic diseases globally, such as keratoconus. To characterize the corneal structural changes, existing methods such as X-ray microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, histology and optical coherence tomography (OCT) have been used. However, these methods have various drawbacks such as invasive detection, the impossibility for in vivo measurement, or limited resolution and sensitivity to structural alterations. Here, we report the application of oversampling nanosensitive OCT for probing the corneal structural alterations. The results indicate that the spatial period increases slightly after 30 minutes riboflavin instillation but decreases significantly after 30 minutes UVA irradiation following the Dresden protocol. The proposed noninvasive method can be implemented using existing OCT systems, without any additional components, for detecting nanoscale changes with the potential to assist diagnostic assessment during CXL treatment, and possibly to be a real-time monitoring tool in clinics.
角膜交联 (CXL) 使用含有核黄素光敏剂的紫外线-A (UVA) 照射，已从一个有趣的概念发展成为全球角膜扩张性疾病（如圆锥角膜）的实用临床治疗方法。为了描述角膜结构的变化，已经使用了现有的方法，如 X 射线显微镜、透射电子显微镜、组织学和光学相干断层扫描 (OCT)。然而，这些方法具有各种缺点，例如侵入性检测、体内测量的不可能性或对结构变化的有限分辨率和灵敏度。在这里，我们报告了超采样纳米敏感 OCT 在探测角膜结构变化中的应用。结果表明，在 Dresden 方案下，核黄素滴注 30 分钟后，角膜的空间周期略有增加，但在 30 分钟 UVA 照射后显著减少。该非侵入性方法可以使用现有的 OCT 系统实现，无需任何额外的组件，用于检测纳米级的变化，有望在 CXL 治疗期间辅助诊断评估，并可能成为临床中的实时监测工具。
