Characterisation of the porcine eyeball as an in-vitro model for dry eye

Abstract

Purpose: To characterise the anatomical parameters of the porcine eye for potentially using it as a laboratory model of dry eye.

Methods: Anterior chamber depth and angle, corneal curvature, shortest and longest diameter, endothelial cell density, and pachymetry were measured in sixty freshly enucleated porcine eyeballs.

Results: Corneal steepest meridian was 7.85±0.32mm, corneal flattest meridian was 8.28±0.32mm, shortest corneal diameter was 12.69±0.58mm, longest corneal diameter was 14.88±0.66mm and central corneal ultrasonic pachymetry was 1009±1μm. Anterior chamber angle was 28.83±4.16°, anterior chamber depth was 1.77±0.27mm, and central corneal thickness measured using OCT was 1248±144μm. Corneal endothelial cell density was 3250±172 cells/mm².

Conclusions: Combining different clinical techniques produced a pool of reproducible data on the porcine eye anatomy, which can be used by researchers to assess the viability of using the porcine eye as an in-vitro/ex-vivo model for dry eye. Due to the similar morphology with the human eye, porcine eyeballs may represent a useful and cost effective model to individually study important key factors in the development of dry eye, such as environmental and mechanical stresses.

Keywords: Confocal microscopy; Dry eye; Ex vivo; In vitro; Optical coherence tomography; Porcine eye.