National Centre for Optics, Vision and Eye Care, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, University of South-Eastern Norway, Kongsberg, Norway.
Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute, INSERM U1208, Bron, France.
Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2022 Feb 1;63(2):8. doi: 10.1167/iovs.63.2.8.
To characterize the association between foveal shape and cone and retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cell topographies in healthy humans.
Multimodal adaptive scanning light ophthalmoscopy and optical coherence tomography (OCT) were used to acquire images of foveal cones, RPE cells, and retinal layers in eyes of 23 healthy participants with normal foveas. Distributions of cone and RPE cell densities were fitted with nonlinear mixed-effects models. A linear mixed-effects model was used to examine the relationship between cone and RPE inter-cell distances and foveal shape as obtained from the OCT scans of retinal thickness.
The best-fit model to the cone densities was a power function with a nasal-temporal asymmetry. There was a significant linear relationship among cone and RPE cell spacing, foveal shape, and foveal cell topography. The model predictions of the central 10° show that the contributions of both the cones and RPE cells are necessary to account for foveal shape.
The results indicate that there is a strong relationship between cone and RPE cell spacing and the shape of the human adolescent and adult fovea. This finding adds to the existing evidence of the critical role that the RPE serves in fetal foveal development and through adolescence, possibly via the imposition of constraints on the number and distribution of foveal cones.
描述健康人类中心凹形状与视锥细胞和视网膜色素上皮（RPE）细胞形态的关系。
使用多模态自适应扫描激光检眼镜和光相干断层扫描（OCT）获取 23 名正常中心凹的健康受试者的中心凹视锥细胞、RPE 细胞和视网膜层图像。使用非线性混合效应模型拟合视锥细胞和 RPE 细胞密度分布。使用线性混合效应模型检查从视网膜厚度 OCT 扫描中获得的视锥细胞和 RPE 细胞间距离与中心凹形状之间的关系。
最佳拟合模型是具有鼻颞侧不对称性的幂函数。视锥细胞和 RPE 细胞间距、中心凹形状和中心凹细胞形态之间存在显著的线性关系。中央 10°的模型预测表明，视锥细胞和 RPE 细胞的贡献对于解释中心凹形状是必要的。
研究结果表明，视锥细胞和 RPE 细胞间距与人类青少年和成人中心凹的形状之间存在很强的关系。这一发现增加了 RPE 在胎儿中心凹发育和青春期过程中发挥关键作用的现有证据，可能是通过对视锥细胞数量和分布的限制来实现的。
