Confocal tomographic angiography of the optic nerve head in patient with glaucoma Original Reearch Article

Purpoe To demontrate the uperficial and deep blood upply of the optic nerve uing a new method, confocal tomographic angiography, which combine two new technique, confocal laer canning ophthalmocopy and indocyanine green angiography, into one ytem. Method In a propective tudy uing confocal tomographic angiography, we evaluated the correlation between the vacular upply of the optic nerve and that of the viual field in 90 eye of 49 ubject (25 eye of 20 ubject with normal viual field and 65 glaucomatou eye of 39 ubject with viual field defect; 10 ubject each had one eye with normal viual field and one with viual field defect). Reult In 22 of 25 eye with a normal viual field, a diffue microvacular filling pattern of the optic dik area wa apparent with no filling defect. The confocal tomographic angiography of 49 of 65 glaucomatou eye had good correlation with their viual field defect location. In 20 of 27 eye with uperior viual field lo, an inferior vacular filling defect wa detected. In 10 of 13 eye with inferior viual field lo, a uperior vacular filling defect wa detected. In 10 of 15 eye with uperior and inferior viual field lo, inferior and uperior vacular filling defect were detected. Finally, in nine of 10 eye with total viual field lo, no vacularity of the optic dik could be detected. Concluion Confocal tomographic angiography i a new imaging technology that may be applied for the evaluation of the vacular upply of the optic nerve head.