Publications by authors named "Gadi Wollstein"

Purpose: To determine the efficacy and safety of repetitive transorbital alternating current stimulation (rtACS) treatment by assessing vision-related quality of life and visual function outcome in subjects treated with rtACS versus sham-control.

Study Design: Double masked, randomized, sham-controlled clinical trial (NCT03188042).

Subjects: Sixteen subjects with moderate-to-advanced glaucoma (visual field [VF] mean deviation [MD] ≤-6.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • This study investigates the microstructure of the lamina cribrosa (LC) in nonhuman primates with glaucoma, focusing on how it differs in those with naturally occurring disease compared to controls.
  • Researchers used advanced imaging (OCT scans) to analyze the optic nerve head and select specific eyes based on retinal nerve fiber layer thickness (RNFL-T).
  • Key findings show that glaucoma-affected eyes had thinner RNFL-T and smaller pore diameters in the LC, indicating potential structural changes associated with the disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the prevalence of artifacts in optical coherence tomography (OCT) images with acceptable signal strength and evaluate the performance of supervised deep learning models in improving OCT image quality assessment.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective study on 4555 OCT images from 546 patients, with each image having an acceptable signal strength (≥6). A comprehensive analysis of prevalent OCT artifacts was performed, and five pretrained convolutional neural network models were trained and tested to infer images based on quality.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To investigate the contributions of the microstructural and metabolic brain environment to glaucoma and their association with visual field (VF) loss patterns by using advanced diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI), proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), and clinical ophthalmic measures.

Methods: Sixty-nine glaucoma and healthy subjects underwent dMRI and/or MRS at 3 Tesla. Ophthalmic data were collected from VF perimetry and optical coherence tomography.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To establish generalizable pointwise spatial relationship between structure and function through occlusion analysis of a deep-learning (DL) model for predicting the visual field (VF) sensitivities from 3-dimensional (3D) OCT scan.

Design: Retrospective cross-sectional study.

Participants: A total of 2151 eyes from 1129 patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Prior evidence suggests racial disparities in the utilization of visual field testing (VFT) for the diagnosis and monitoring of glaucoma. In this study, we considered the effect of baseline glaucoma severity and socioeconomic disadvantage along with other potential confounders such as test reliability, ancillary tests, and glaucoma surgeries on racial disparity in the frequency of VFT.

Methods: The records of all subjects with a diagnosis of glaucoma who received VFT at an academic, tertiary care facility from January 2018 to December 2021 were accessed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To determine whether peripapillary atrophy (PPA) area is an indicator of glaucomatous structural and functional damage and progression.

Methods: In this retrospective longitudinal analysis from ongoing prospective study we qualified 71 eyes (50 subjects) with glaucoma. All subjects had a comprehensive ophthalmic examination, visual field (VF), and spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) testing in at least three visits.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Excitotoxicity from the impairment of glutamate uptake constitutes an important mechanism in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson's disease. Within the eye, excitotoxicity is thought to play a critical role in retinal ganglion cell death in glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, retinal ischemia, and optic nerve injury, yet how excitotoxic injury impacts different retinal layers is not well understood. Here, we investigated the longitudinal effects of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA)-induced excitotoxic retinal injury in a rat model using deep learning-assisted retinal layer thickness estimation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * Current clinical practices use optical coherence tomography (OCT) to monitor glaucoma, but there's no agreement on the most effective biomarkers to track its progression.
  • * The paper introduces an algorithm for hierarchical geodesic modeling of 3D OCT images, which can quantitatively analyze structural changes in glaucoma over time and differentiate these changes from normal aging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The cellular-level visualization of retinal microstructures such as blood vessel wall components, not available with other imaging modalities, is provided with unprecedented details by dark-field imaging configurations; however, the interpretation of such images alone is sometimes difficult since multiple structural disturbances may be present in the same time. Particularly in eyes with retinal pathology, microstructures may appear in high-resolution retinal images with a wide range of sizes, sharpnesses, and brightnesses. In this paper we show that motion contrast and phase gradient imaging modalities, as well as the simultaneous acquisition of depth-resolved optical coherence tomography (OCT) images, provide additional insight to help understand the retinal neural and vascular structures seen in dark-field images and may enable improved diagnostic and treatment plans.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Broken stick analysis is a widely used approach for detecting unknown breakpoints where the association between measurements is nonlinear. We propose LIMBARE, an advanced linear mixed-effects breakpoint analysis with robust estimation, especially designed for longitudinal ophthalmic studies. LIMBARE accommodates repeated measurements from both eyes and over time, and it effectively addresses the presence of outliers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Race disparities in the healthcare system and the resulting inequality in clinical data among different races hinder the ability to generate equitable prediction results. This study aims to reduce healthcare disparities arising from data imbalance by leveraging advanced transfer learning (TL) methods.

Method: We examined the ophthalmic healthcare disparities at a population level using electronic medical records data from a study cohort (N = 785) receiving care at an academic institute.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: The presence of imbalanced datasets in medical applications can negatively affect deep learning methods. This study aims to investigate how the performance of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for glaucoma diagnosis can be improved by addressing imbalanced learning issues through utilizing glaucoma suspect samples, which are often excluded from studies because they are a mixture of healthy and preperimetric glaucomatous eyes, in a semi-supervised learning approach.

Methods: A baseline 3D CNN was developed and trained on a real-world glaucoma dataset, which is naturally imbalanced (like many other real-world medical datasets).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * Research using advanced imaging techniques reveals that in older adults, both GABA and glutamate levels drop as glaucoma severity increases, regardless of their age.
  • * The study finds that decreased GABA levels specifically predict neural specificity in the visual cortex, suggesting that addressing GABA loss could enhance visual processing in glaucoma patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the link between structural changes in the eye, measured using optical coherence tomography (OCT), and functional changes in visual fields (VFs), aiming to improve assessment methods.
  • Researchers created a deep learning (DL) model using 3D OCT data, which significantly outperformed a traditional 2D model in estimating functional performance and handling measurement challenges known as floor effects.
  • The improved 3D model offers a more accurate understanding of structure-function relationships, potentially aiding in quicker and more reliable patient evaluations and clinical decisions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) are the premier nonhuman primate model for studying human health and disease. We investigated if age was associated with clinically relevant ocular features in a large cohort of free-ranging rhesus macaques from Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico.

Methods: We evaluated 120 rhesus macaques (73 males, 47 females) from 0 to 29 years old (mean ± SD: 12.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Retinal oxygen saturation (sO) provides essential information about the eye's response to pathological changes that can result in vision loss. Visible-light optical coherence tomography (vis-OCT) is a noninvasive tool that has the potential to measure retinal sO in a clinical setting. However, its reliability is currently limited by unwanted signals referred to as spectral contaminants (SCs), and a comprehensive strategy to isolate true oxygen-dependent signals from SCs in vis-OCT is lacking.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Lamina cribrosa (LC) deformation is hypothesized to play a major role in glaucoma pathogenesis. The purpose of this study was to determine in vivo how varying intraocular pressure (IOP) under fixed intracranial pressure (ICP), and vice versa, deforms the pore paths throughout the LC volume.

Methods: Spectral-domain optical coherence tomography scans of the optic nerve head were acquired from healthy adult rhesus monkeys under different pressures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (ID: NCT03715231). A total of 20 participants (37 eyes) who were 18 or older and had glaucoma or were glaucoma suspects were enrolled from the NYU Langone Eye Center and Bellevue Hospital.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To evaluate changes in monkey optic nerve head (ONH) morphology under acutely controlled intraocular pressure (IOP) and intracranial pressure (ICP).

Methods: Seven ONHs from six monkeys were imaged via optical coherence tomography while IOP and ICP were maintained at one of 16 conditions. These conditions were defined by 4 levels for each pressure: low, baseline, high and very high.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Broken stick analysis is a widely used approach for detecting unknown breakpoints where association between measurements is non-linear. We propose LIMBARE, an advanced near ixed-effects reakpoint nalysis with obust stimation, especially designed for longitudinal ophthalmic studies. LIMBARE accommodates repeated measurements from both eyes and overtime, and effectively address the presence of outliers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Lamina cribrosa (LC) deformations caused by elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) are believed to contribute to glaucomatous neuropathy and have therefore been extensively studied, in many conditions, from in vivo to ex vivo. We compare acute IOP-induced global and local LC deformations immediately before (premortem) and after (postmortem) sacrifice by exsanguination.

Methods: The optic nerve heads of three healthy monkeys 12 to 15 years old were imaged with spectral-domain optical coherence tomography under controlled IOP premortem and postmortem.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Vivid Vision Perimetry (VVP; Vivid Vision, Inc) is a novel method for performing in-office and home-based visual field assessment using a virtual reality platform and oculokinetic perimetry. Here we examine the reproducibility of VVP Swift and compare results with conventional standard automated perimetry (SAP) and spectral-domain (SD) OCT.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Spectral-domain (SD-) optical coherence tomography (OCT) can reliably measure axonal (peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer [pRNFL]) and neuronal (macular ganglion cell + inner plexiform layer [GCIPL]) thinning in the retina. Measurements from 2 commonly used SD-OCT devices are often pooled together in multiple sclerosis (MS) studies and clinical trials despite software and segmentation algorithm differences; however, individual pRNFL and GCIPL thickness measurements are not interchangeable between devices. In some circumstances, such as in the absence of a consistent OCT segmentation algorithm across platforms, a conversion equation to transform measurements between devices may be useful to facilitate pooling of data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The field of ophthalmic imaging has grown substantially over the last years. Massive improvements in image processing and computer hardware have allowed the emergence of multiple imaging techniques of the eye that can transform patient care. The purpose of this review is to describe the most recent advances in eye imaging and explain how new technologies and imaging methods can be utilized in a clinical setting.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF