Great presentations at the rtx1 users’ e-symposium 2022! Replay available
06.06.2022
Last week, we had the pleasure to host the rtx1 users’ e-symposium 2022, chaired by Prof. Paulo E. Stanga from The Retina Clinic London, and Dr. Daniela Bacherini from AOU Careggi Teaching Hospital in Florence.
“We are in a great era of continuous evolution in retinal imaging, and adaptive optics is a fascinating technique that allows real time imaging of photoreceptors at the cellular level” said Dr Daniela Bacherini in introduction.
In this 90min meeting, 12 users of Imagine Eyes’ adaptive optics (AO) technology shared their experience with cellular and microvascular retinal imaging in clinical settings. They presented recent progress made with rtx1 AO cameras, as well as the first clinical cases with a new multimodal-multiscale clinical prototype.Their clinical studies and case reports covered a wide range of pathologies and eye conditions: retinitis pigmentosa and other inherited retinal diseases, central macular edema and serous detachments, AMD, diabetes, inflammation…
They showed impressive images of retinal phenotypes at the microscopic scale, quantitative data on cone cells and small vessel structure, as well as follow-up results that revealed progression on short timescales. The clinicians even shared with the audience practical tips for AO examination protocols, image interpretation and analysis on such patients.
We roughly examined 180 [retinitis pigmentosa] patients with adaptive optics, and we could identify 5 patterns that we could observe repeatedly.
Adaptive optics will help us go beyond scientific knowledge on the pathogenesis of drusen, different types of drusen, their composition and morphology. I think it will create a lot of new knowledge that we weren’t aware of previously.
There are no other techniques to visualize in such detail the deposits or other alterations that we could see in the endothelial wall of the retinal vessels. So I think that it can be a very useful tool for retinal vessel disease and also systemic pathologies.
We showed that in some cases, even with normal retinal sensitivity, cone density declines, so maybe the structural changes precede functional changes in these patients.
In this case, only AO images showed objective abnormality. It led us to diagnose the patient as acute macular neuroretinopathy.
We see the very sick internal limiting membrane (ILM) on adaptive optics better than with other imaging systems. It will be a help for the surgeon to decide where to start the peel. We have the OCT during surgery but it doesn’t show well the ILM.
In this symposium, Imagine Eyes also introduced the new features that are coming soon for the rtx1 camera. Multi-acquisition protocols and integrated mosaicing will streamline the use of AO imaging for clinical studies and therapeutic studies. New examination types will enable novel explorations of RPE alterations as well as retinal vessel function at the microscopic scale.
We are very grateful to the chairpersons and speakers for sharing their insight during this event. “We have seen wonderful results and images and it is a great motivation for us to continue developing the technology” concluded Nicolas Chateau.
If you wish to know more about their experience and findings with AO retinal imaging, you can watch the replay videos below (1 video per session).