The Role of Retinal Plasticity in the Formation of Irreversible Retinal Deformations in Age-Related Macular Degeneration.

Purpose: To construct a realistic physical model of viscoelastic retinal stretching and, on its basis, derive a universal quantitative criterion of irreversible retinal deformations during age-related macular degeneration.

Methods: In this work, standard methods of nonlinear fracture mechanics of ductile and viscoelastic materials were applied to study the evolution of retinal deformation progress in patients with neovascular age-related macular degeneration in the area of large druses or subretinal or sub-retinal pigment epithelium fluid accumulation. A two-dimensional rhombic model of viscoelastic Kelvin-Feucht primitives was used to reconstruct the parameters included in the approximation of the creep strain growth rate.