Purpose: We sought to visualize the aqueous outflow system in 3 dimensions (3D) in living human eyes, and to investigate the use of commercially available spectral-domain optical coherence tomographic (SD-OCT) systems for this purpose.
Design: Prospective, observational study.
Participants: One randomly determined eye in each of 6 normal healthy subjects was included.
Testing: We performed 3D SD-OCT imaging of the aqueous humor outflow structures with 2 devices: The Cirrus HD-OCT and the Bioptigen SDOIS.
Main outcome measures: We created 3D virtual castings of Schlemm's canal (SC) and more distal outflow structures from scan data from each device.
Results: Virtual casting of the SC provided visualization of more aqueous vessels branching from SC than could be located by interrogating the 2-dimensional (2D) image stack. Similarly, virtual casting of distal structures allowed visualization of large and small aqueous outflow channel networks that could not be appreciated with conventional 2D visualization.
Conclusions: The outflow pathways from SC to the superficial vasculature can be identified and tracked in living human eyes using commercially available SD-OCT.
Copyright © 2012 American Academy of Ophthalmology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.