OCT-measured retinal vasculature and intrinsic optical responses to transcorneal electrical stimulation

In recent years, transcorneal electrical stimulation (TES) has been regarded as a potential treatment method for degenerative retinal disease. However, the mechanism of TES therapy is still not understood till now. As one of the manifestations of retinal degenerative diseases, the fundus non-vascular perfusion area has been shown to be related to the degeneration of retinal photoreceptor cells and the attenuation of the retinal vasculature and there is a great probability to be cured by TES treatment. The purpose of this study was to analyze the variation of the intrinsic optical signal (IOS) characteristic and the retinal blood vasculature induced by TES in mice and to investigate the therapeutic mechanism of TES for retinal degenerative diseases. In this study, swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) system was custom-built to record the IOS and fundus vascular response under TES in pre-, during, and post-stimulation periods, respectively. Results showed that the vessel density (VD) of retinal vessels slightly increased under TES, positive and negative IOS changes significantly increased in all retinal layers, and recovery of the microvascular access in the lesion area was obviously observed. This study might be useful to understanding the treatment mechanism of TES on degenerative retinal diseases and it proved that OCT and OCTA could be used as monitoring techniques for TES therapy.