Multimodal assessment of corneal erosions using optical coherence tomography and automated grading of fluorescein staining in a rabbit dry eye model

Ifat Sher, Adi Tzameret, Alicja M. Szalapak, Tomer Carmeli, Estela Derazne, Noa Avni-Zauberman, Arie L. Marcovich, Guy Ben Simon, Ygal Rotenstreich*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the potential use of anterior segment spectral domain optical coherence tomography (AS-SD-OCT) combined with an automated grading of fluorescein staining for assessment of corneal erosions in a rabbit short-term dry eye model. Methods: Twenty-one New Zealand white rabbits were anesthetized and eyes were kept open for 140 minutes to induce acute corneal desiccation. Rectangular scans of the cornea were performed using Spectralis AS-SD-OCT. Total corneal thickness, corneal epithelial thickness, and the percentage of epithelial erosion area (PEEA) were evaluated. Corneas were stained with fluorescein and graded automatically using EpiView and semi-automatically using ImageJ. Spearman’s rank-order correlations were calculated to compare the AS-SD-OCT PEEA and the two corneal staining scores. Results: Eye desiccation resulted in corneal epithelium erosions that covered 0.67% to 14.2% of the central cornea (mean ± SD: 3.95% ± 3.2%) by AS-SD-OCT. The percentage of corneal area positively stained with fluorescein ranged from 0.24% to 38.01% (mean ± SD: 12.24% ± 9.7%) by using ImageJ, correlating with the AS-SD-OCT PEEA (Spearman’s q, 0.574; P = 0.007). The EpiView score ranged from 0.5 to 10.17 and was better correlated with the AS-SD-OCT PEEA score (Spearman’s q, 0.795; P = 0.000017). Conclusions: Our study suggests that multimodal analysis of AS-SD-OCT and grading of fluorescein staining using EpiView software may enable quantitative assessment of corneal epithelial erosions in a rabbit short-term dry eye model. Translational Relevance: This multimodal imaging analysis may be applied for evaluation of superficial punctate keratitis associated with dry eye.

Original languageEnglish
Article number27
JournalTranslational Vision Science and Technology
Volume8
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2019

Funding

FundersFunder number
Epitech Mag LTD

    Keywords

    • Corneal defects
    • Dry eye
    • Epithelial erosions
    • Fluorescein
    • SD-OCT

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