Department of Clinical Sciences, Ophthalmology, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Department of Ophthalmology, Skåne University Hospital, Kioskgatan 1 , 221 85, Lund, Sweden.
Sci Rep. 2023 Apr 5;13(1):5566. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-32822-y.
The healthy cornea is transparent, however, disease can affect its structure, rendering it more or less opaque. The ability to assess the clarity of the cornea objectively could thus be of considerable interest for keratoconus patients. It has previously been suggested that densitometry can be used to diagnose early keratoconus, and that the values of densitometry variables increase with increasing disease severity, indicating that densitometry could also be used to assess progressive keratoconus. Previous studies have only assessed the repeatability of corneal densitometry measurements on the same day, which does not reflect the clinical setting in which changes are evaluated over time. We have therefore evaluated the inter-day repeatability of densitometry measurements in both patients with keratoconus and healthy controls. Measurements in the middle layer of the 2-6 mm zone of the cornea showed the best repeatability. Although an objective measure of the corneal transparency could be interesting, the generally poor repeatability of densitometry measurements limits their use. The repeatability of corneal clarity measurements could be improved by using other approaches such as optical coherence tomography, but this remains to be investigated. Such improvements would allow the more widespread use of corneal densitometry in clinical practice.
健康的角膜是透明的，然而，疾病会影响其结构，使其或多或少变得不透明。因此，客观评估角膜清晰度的能力对视锥细胞营养不良患者可能具有相当大的意义。以前有人提出，密度测定法可用于诊断早期的圆锥角膜，并且密度测定变量的值随着疾病严重程度的增加而增加，这表明密度测定法也可用于评估进行性圆锥角膜。以前的研究仅评估了同一天角膜密度测量的可重复性，这并不能反映随着时间的推移评估变化的临床环境。因此，我们评估了患有圆锥角膜和健康对照组的患者的日间重复测量的可重复性。在角膜 2-6 毫米区域中层的测量显示出最佳的可重复性。尽管角膜透明度的客观测量可能很有趣，但密度测定测量的一般较差的可重复性限制了其使用。通过使用其他方法，如光学相干断层扫描，可以提高角膜清晰度测量的可重复性，但这仍有待研究。这些改进将允许在临床实践中更广泛地使用角膜密度测定。
