Adaptive optics ophthalmoscopy in retinitis pigmentosa: typical patterns

Author: Friederike Kortüm (Germany)

Co-authors: Melanie Kempf, Laura Kuehlewein, Fadi Nasser, Michel Paques, Eberhard Zrenner, Katarina Stingl

Purpose

Due to advances in optics, electronics and computation, morphological changes of the photoreceptor mosaic can be made visible by adaptive optics ophthalmoscopy (AOO). Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a degenerative retinal disease that affects primarily the rod photoreceptors followed by the loss of cone receptors. This paper aims to present typical findings in RP with the adaptive optics flood illumination retinal camera rtx1.

Setting/Venue

Departement of Ophthalmology, University of Tübingen, Germany

Methods

174 patients with syndromic or non-syndromic RP were examined with the commercially available adaptive optics flood illumination retinal camera rtx1 and spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) and fundus autofluorescence (FAF) imaging at the Center for Ophthalmology, University of Tuebingen. AOO patterns were studied in the context of multimodal retinal imaging.

Results

Five different patterns in RP could be observed: 1) unspecific atrophy, 2) central visibility of cones, 3) “puffy” cones, 4) the “cheetah” pattern, and 5) atrophic pigment clumping. These patterns in AOO correlated with findings on OCT and FAF imaging. We hypothesize that these patterns represent specific stages of photoreceptor degeneration in RP.

Conlusions

AOO provides an additional dimension to high-resolution retinal imaging in RP, enabling to determine patterns of retinal degeneration. Future evaluation of cone photoreceptor mosaic using AAO imaging is warranted to determine changes on an even more microscopical level, e.g. photoreceptor integrity.

Financial Disclosure

None