|Articles|March 15, 2016

Novel imaging technique characterizes aqueous outflow

Aqueous angiography is being developed as a real-time imaging technique for studying aqueous outflow.

Take-home message: Aqueous angiography is being developed as a real-time imaging technique for studying aqueous outflow.

Reviewed by Alex Huang, MD, PhD

Los Angeles-Aqueous angiography is a new and developing imaging technique that is expected to provide valuable information on aqueous humor outflow.

Research completed so far in ex vivo models demonstrates that the technique is able to provide real-time and comprehensive information about aqueous humor outflow at physiologic IOPs.

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Alex Huang, MD, PhD, assistant professor of ophthalmology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, affiliated with Doheny Eye Institute, described the importance of using aqueous angiography to understand aqueous outflow both to gain a greater basic understanding of the eye as well as to possibly improve glaucoma surgeries.

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Understanding aqueous outflow

Dr. Huang explained that aqueous humor outflow is conventionally taught from an intraocular perspective using a two-dimensional view in which the aqueous is produced at the ciliary processes and travels through outflow pathways.

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However, when converting this two-dimensional view into a three-dimensional eye and viewed externally from the front, an impression of uniform and circumferential outflow around the limbus is created.

The reality, however, is that aqueous humor outflow is segmental in nature.

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“There may be areas where outflow is good and areas where it is bad, and it may be segmentally different between individuals and also between fellow eyes of the same individual,” Dr. Huang said. “There may also be disease relevance to patterns of aqueous humor outflow.”

For example, the ocular hypertensive component of glaucoma may represent the loss of functional segmental units, he noted.

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