Advances in Diagnostic Imaging Technologies to Evaluate the Retina and the Optic Disc

Copyright © 2015 Antonio Ferreras et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Current diagnostic and therapeutic decisions based on the outcomes of imaging technologies have become a common practice in every ophthalmic subspecialty. New devices and tools for evaluating the retina and optic nerve head, such as scanning laser polarimetry and spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT), are widely used in clinical practice. These technologies provide objective quantitative measurements and in vivo real-time images of ocular structures. The performance of imaging devices is continuously being improved, and thus knowledge of their applications , advantages, and limitations must also be continuously updated to optimize their management by clinicians. While imaging technologies require relatively transparent media, the variability of the measurements acquired by these devices is low, making these instruments useful for monitoring changes over time. In this issue, M. Ara et al. report excellent reproducibility of scanning laser polarimetry in healthy and glaucoma patients. In their review article, J. J. Garcia-Medina et al. evaluated the effects of posterior capsule opaci-fication and found that image quality improves after capsu-lotomy, but a new baseline for future comparisons should be established. Additionally, R. L. Brautaset et al. report that OCT allows for the acquisition of reliable macular measurements in individuals with moderate to severe keratoconus. M. Cavallari et al. developed a semiautomated, computer-based method to detect and quantify retinal vessel abnormalities by analyzing digital fundus photographs. This tool was successfully used to evaluate patients with hypertensive retinopathy and cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy. G. S. K. Yau et al. compared central macular thickness measured by OCT in Chinese children and found that it was thicker in myopic eyes compared to emmetropic and hyperopic eyes. Three papers regarding the role of the ganglion cell complex in different disorders, multiple sclerosis, age-related macular degeneration, and glaucoma, demonstrated that the same tool could be used with different approaches depending on the disease: " Comparative Diagnostic Accuracy of Gan-observed a better sensitivity-specificity balance for the mac-ular ganglion cell complex measured with OCT in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis than peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer thickness, while A. Mavilio et al. found that reduction of the ganglion cell complex was related to reduced amplitude and increased variability of the phase of the