Evaluation of a retinal oximetry image quality indicator in patients with cataract

Purpose: To evaluate a new automated retinal oximetry image quality indicator with cataract as a clinical model. Methods: Sixty-one eyes in 61 patients were imaged by the Oxymap T1 Retinal Oximeter at baseline and 25 eyes were also examined 3 weeks after cataract surgery. Image quality (0–10 on a continuous scale) was compared with standardized AREDS cataract grading and Pentacam lens densitometry. Associations with retinal oximetry measurements and visual acuity were examined. Results: Image quality correlated with total, nuclear and posterior subcapsular cataract grades (ANOVA, p < 0.05), tended to be associated with lens densitometry and it improved from 4.3 ± 1.4 to 5.7 ± 1.0 (p < 0.05) after cataract surgery. Very low image quality, below 3, led to vessel detection failure in retinal oximetry images. Higher image qualities were linearly associated with higher measured retinal oxygen saturations (r = 0.52 in arteries and r = 0.46 in veins; p < 0.001). Conclusion: Retinal oximetry image quality deteriorated with increasing cataract density and improved after cataract surgery, supporting its use as a measure of optical clarity. The numerical quality indicator demonstrated a threshold below which images of poor optical quality should be discarded. Image quality affects the estimates of retinal oximetry parameters and should therefore be included in future analyses.