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Review
. 2021 Jan 8:13:1-20.
doi: 10.2147/EB.S235238. eCollection 2021.

Optical Coherence Tomography in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease: What Can It Tell Us?

Ailin Song #  1 , Nicholas Johnson #  1 , Alexandria Ayala  1 , Atalie C Thompson  2
Affiliations
Review

Optical Coherence Tomography in Patients with Alzheimer's Disease: What Can It Tell Us?

Ailin Song et al. Eye Brain. .

Abstract

Purpose: Although Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a leading cause of dementia worldwide, its clinical diagnosis remains a challenge. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) and OCT with angiography (OCTA) are non-invasive ophthalmic imaging tools with the potential to detect retinal structural and microvascular changes in patients with AD, which may serve as biomarkers for the disease. In this systematic review, we evaluate whether certain OCT and OCTA parameters are significantly associated with AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Methods: PubMed database was searched using a combination of MeSH terms to identify studies for review. Studies were organized by participant diagnostic groups, type of imaging modality, and OCT/OCTA parameters of interest. Participant demographic data was also collected and baseline descriptive statistics were calculated for the included studies.

Results: Seventy-one studies were included for review, representing a total of 6757 patients (2350 AD, 793 MCI, 2902 healthy controls (HC), and 841 others with a range of other neurodegenerative diagnoses). The mean baseline ages were 72.78±3.69, 71.52±2.88, 70.55±3.85 years for AD, MCI and HC groups, respectively. The majority of studies noted significant structural and functional decline in AD patients when compared to HC. Although analysis of MCI groups yielded more mixed results, a similar pattern of decline was often noted amongst patients with MCI relative to HC. OCT and OCTA measurements were also shown to correlate with established measures of AD such as neuropsychological testing or neuroimaging.

Conclusion: OCT and OCTA show great potential as non-invasive technologies for the diagnosis of AD. However, further research is needed to determine whether there are AD-specific patterns of structural or microvascular change in the retina and optic nerve that distinguish AD from other neurodegenerative diseases. Development of sensitive and specific OCT/OCTA parameters will be necessary before they can be used to detect AD in clinical settings.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; dementia; mild cognitive impairment; optical coherence tomography; optical coherence tomography angiography.

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Conflict of interest statement

Dr. Thompson is supported by a grant from the National Eye Institute (1K23EY030897-01). The authors report no financial or other conflicts of interest with this work. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow chart of literature review process used to acquire references.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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