Measures of Receptor Health for Use in Clinical Trials

How can we use OCT to measure receptor health in diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa?

In our collaboration with David Birch, we presented evidence that an easily identified marker on OCT scans (i.e., the edge of inner segment/outer segment border, aka IS/OS, ISe, or EZ band) is a more sensitive, as well as faster, test for trials assessing treatments for outer retinal diseases, such as RP. Recent work, clearly supports this hypothesis.(refs 1-3 below).  Our work was highlighted as a “game-changer” in the newsletter of the Foundation Fighting Blindness.

Relevant Recent Reviews/Papers:

  1. Hood DC, Ramachandran R, Holopigian K, Lazow M, Birch DG, Greenstein VG. Method for deriving visual field boundaries from OCT scans of patients with retinitis pigmentosa. Biomed Opt Exp. 2011;2(5):1106–14. PMCID: PMC3087568
  2. Birch DG, Locke KG, Wen, Y, Locke, KI, Hoffman, DR, Hood DC. Spectral-domain optical coherence tomography measures of the outer segment layer of progression in patients with x-linked retinitis pigmentosa. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2013;131(9):1143-50. PMCID: PMC4111937
  3. Ramachandran R, Zhou L, Locke KG, Birch DG, Hood DC. A comparison of methods for tracking progression in X-linked retinitis pigmentosa using frequency domain OCT. Trans Visi Sci Tech. 2013;2(7):1-9. PMCID: PMC3860354