Imaging the Choroid: From Indocyanine Green Angiography to Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography

Abstract

The choroid is the vascular structure nourishing the retinal pigment epithelium and the outer retina and it plays a key role in the homeostasis of the eye both under physiological and pathological conditions. In the last 20 years we have moved from "guessing" what was happening beyond the retinal pigment epithelium to actually visualize structural and functional changes of the choroid in vivo noninvasively. In this review we describe the state of the art of choroidal imaging, focusing on the multiple techniques available in the clinical and research setting including indocyanine green angiography, labeled-cells angiographies, optical coherence tomography (OCT), enhanced depth imaging, swept source OCT, and OCT angiography. In the first section of the article, we describe their main applications and the basic principles to interpret the imaging results. Increasing evidence suggests that the choroid is much more involved than we used to think in many pathological conditions from uveitis to intraocular tumors, from vascular diseases to age-related macular degeneration. All clinicians should hence know which is the most appropriate imaging investigation to explore the choroid in the disease they are dealing with and how to interpret the results. For this reason the second section of this review summarizes the best imaging approach and the most common findings visible on choroidal imaging in different diseases of the eye.