Hemesath Angela M, Ma Justin P, Polascik Bryce W, Grewal Dilraj, Fekrat Sharon
Department of Ophthalmology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, USA.
iMIND (Eye Multimodal Imaging in Neurodegenerative Disease) Study Group, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, USA.
Cureus. 2024 Feb 20;16(2):e54557. doi: 10.7759/cureus.54557. eCollection 2024 Feb.
We analyzed multimodal retinal and choroidal imaging, including optical coherence tomography (OCT) and OCT angiography (OCTA), to assess differences and characterize variations in the retinal and choroidal structure and microvasculature between healthy monozygotic twins without ocular or systemic pathology over a five-year period. Retinal imaging of both subjects revealed normal age-related changes. There was up to an 11% difference in OCT and OCTA variables within the subjects, both at baseline and at five years, and there was up to an 18% difference in OCT and OCTA parameters between the subjects for both time points. Larger changes in subfoveal choroidal thickness and foveal avascular zone area were observed. Our observations suggest that the parafoveal superficial capillary plexus, choroidal vascularity index, central subfield thickness, retinal nerve fiber layer thickness, and ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer thickness may be more heavily influenced by genetic, rather than environmental, factors. In contrast, subfoveal choroidal thickness and the foveal avascular zone area may be more heavily influenced by environmental factors. The environmental impact on retinal and choroidal structure and microvasculature is increasingly important to characterize, as such imaging parameters are being explored as potential biomarkers of systemic disease. These differences, as seen in these identical twin subjects, may be important considerations in supporting the security of biometric identifiers.
我们分析了多模态视网膜和脉络膜成像，包括光学相干断层扫描（OCT）和OCT血管造影（OCTA），以评估健康同卵双胞胎在五年内无眼部或全身病变情况下视网膜和脉络膜结构及微血管系统的差异并对其变化进行特征描述。两名受试者的视网膜成像均显示出正常的年龄相关变化。在基线期和五年时，受试者自身的OCT和OCTA变量差异高达11%，在这两个时间点，受试者之间的OCT和OCTA参数差异高达18%。观察到黄斑下脉络膜厚度和黄斑无血管区面积有更大变化。我们的观察结果表明，黄斑旁浅表毛细血管丛、脉络膜血管指数、中心子区域厚度、视网膜神经纤维层厚度和神经节细胞 - 内丛状层厚度可能受遗传因素而非环境因素的影响更大。相比之下，黄斑下脉络膜厚度和黄斑无血管区面积可能受环境因素的影响更大。随着此类成像参数被探索作为全身性疾病的潜在生物标志物，表征环境对视网膜和脉络膜结构及微血管系统的影响变得越来越重要。在这些同卵双胞胎受试者中看到的这些差异，可能是支持生物识别标识符安全性的重要考虑因素。
