Pilot study for three-dimensional assessment of laminar pore structure in patients with glaucoma, as measured with swept source optical coherence tomography.

Purpose: To develop a method to quantify, based on swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT), the 3D structure of the laminar pores in patients with glaucoma.

Methods: This retrospective study examined 160 laminar pores from 8 eyes of 8 cases: 4 normal subjects and 4 open-angle glaucoma (OAG) patients. We reconstructed 3D volume data for a 3 x 3 mm disc, using a method similar to OCT angiography, and segmented the structure of the lamina cribrosa. Then, we manually segmented each laminar pore in sequential C-scan images (>90 slices at 2.6-micron intervals) with VCAT5 (RIKEN, Japan). We compared the control and OAG subjects with the Mann-Whitney U test. Differences were considered significant at p < 0.05.

Results: We found that the laminar pores of the OAG patients had a significantly smaller average cross-sectional area, smaller 3D volume (adjusted to the average thickness of the lamina cribrosa), and higher true sphericity, and lower principal value (P1, 2, 3) of the 3D structure data (all: p < 0.0001). The topographic distribution of damaged laminar pores was consistent with the damaged area of the macular map.

Conclusion: We successfully developed a method to quantify the 3D structure of the laminar pores; providing a useful tool to assess lamina cribrosa-associated risk factors for glaucoma. These findings promise to benefit future investigations into the pathomechanisms of glaucoma.