Using optical coherence tomography angiography as a biomarker of retinopathy severity and treatment for diabetic retinopathy

PURPOSE: The goal was to evaluate optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A) as a biomarker to correlate retinal vessel density (VD) with diabetic retinopathy (DR) severity and visual acuity, as well as track antivascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) treatment efficacy. METHODS: This retrospective cohort study analyzed the automatically quantified VDs of the superficial vascular complex (SVC) and deep vascular complex (DVC), including the whole, foveal, and parafoveal VDs, on quality OCT-A scans in patients diagnosed with DR. A multivariate linear regression and analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis compared VDs to DR severity, visual acuity, and demographic factors. A linear mixed analysis determined the effects of VD by whether anti-VEGF therapy was given to patients with OCT-A scans at multiple time points. RESULTS: There was a positive correlation of the VDs in both the SVC whole and parafoveal VD and DVC parafoveal VD with decreased DR severity and increased visual acuity (p≤0.001). The DVC whole VD was also positively correlated with increased visual acuity (p<0.001). There was no difference in the VDs associated with anti-VEGF treatment over time. CONCLUSIONS: OCT-A VD shows promise for diagnosing and monitoring DR using DR severity and visual acuity. Anti-VEGF treatment had no significant effect (p=0.063) on vascular density in diabetic retinopathy.