Research recently published in Microvascular Research quantified conjunctival microvascular characteristics and investigated their relationship with the presence and severity of coronary artery disease (CAD) by using full-range swept-source anterior segment OCTA (AS-OCTA).

This study revealed that both vessel area density and vessel length density of conjunctiva decreased significantly in CAD patients. Additionally, microvascular junction density was found significantly associated with the severity of CAD among women patients. All these results indicated that conjunctival microvessels were associated with both the presence and severity of CAD, suggesting its potential role in cardiovascular risk screening and severity assessment.

A 400kHz speed swept-source OCTA (BMizar, TowardPi Medical) was used in this study to capture AS-OCTA images of conjunctival microvasculature with built-in anterior segmentation algorithm. Flow quantifications of anterior segment OCTA are also available on the device, including vessel density and flow area measurement.

This research is authored by Dr. Jing Liu from Beijing Friendship Hospital and Prof. Xiaobing Yu from Beijing Hospital.

Link to the original text: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0026286224000827