The heyday of optical coherence tomography angiography is just around the corner

Excerpt

Since the introduction of optical coherence tomography (OCT) nearly three decades ago, this noninvasive imaging modality has dramatically changed our clinical practice. The advances in OCT technology have aimed for higher resolution and higher acquisition speed, resulting in widefield (WF)-OCT imaging and phase-variance OCT (i.e., OCT angiography: OCTA) imaging [1]. The advent of OCTA enabled noninvasive imaging of ocular blood flow and has contributed significantly to obtaining detailed information on macular disorders among others. It is well known that OCTA is inferior to conventional dye-based angiography (fluorescein angiography [FA]/indocyanine-green angiography [IA]) in that it is unable to identify dye leakage from disrupted blood-retinal barrier or dye staining to abnormal ocular tissues. However, the advantage of OCTA over FA/IA (i.e., high-resolution, noninvasive visualization of microvasculature with depth resolution) is so powerful that clinical research on the macula or optic disc using OCTA is progressing rapidly [2]. …