Purpose: To determine whether the hyporeflective areas in the blue images obtained by widefield scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (SLO) correspond to the non-perfused areas (NPAs) in the fluorescein angiograms (FA) in eyes with diabetic retinopathy (DR).
Design: Retrospective observational case series.
Methods: Ninety patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) were studied. All had undergone multicolor widefield SLO imaging. The NPAs in the FA images and hyporeflective areas in the blue widefield SLO images were examined. The morphology of the retina was determined by optical coherence tomography.
Results: Hyporeflective areas in the blue SLO images were found with a rate of 76.6% in eyes with proliferative DR eyes. In a comparison of the hyporeflective areas of the blue SLO images to the non-perfused areas in the FA images, the appearance and the correspondence in the locations of these two types of images were found, and the rate was highly concordant with a Cohen's kappa value of 0.675.
Conclusions: The high concordance between the hyporeflective areas in the widefield blue SLO and the NPAs in the FA indicates that widefield blue SLO can be used to identify ischemic retinal areas in eyes with DR without the intravenous injection of any dye.
Copyright © 2021 Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the Asia-Pacific Academy of Ophthalmology.