Diabetic retinopathy is a prevalent fundus vascular disorder, characterized as a progressively visual impairment, primarily marked by damage to the microvasculature of the retina. In patients with a long history of the disease, nearly all will experience varying degrees of retinal microvascular complications, often accompanied by retinopathy. This condition significantly impacts vision, particularly in younger patients, who not only tend to experience a more rapid onset of the disease but also face a higher recurrence rate post-treatment [17–18]. As a new diagnostic technique, OCTA achieves the purpose of visualizing retinal and choroid capillaries through layered vascular reconstruction, and uses new algorithms to generate high-resolution images. Compared with other diagnostic techniques, it has the advantages of non-invasiveness, no mydriasis, and no time window limitation, and can quantitatively analyze the blood flow in each layer of blood vessels, so it has been widely used in ophthalmology at home and abroad [19–20]. This technology can not only detect the retinopathy in patients, accurately diagnose diabetic eyes with higher risk, but even screen out diabetes before systematic diagnosis, which has a good predictive effect. However, no research has done a clear quantitative analysis on the changes of retinal BFD and retinal thickness in sufferers with diabetic retinopathy, and no diagnostic prediction has been made. Therefore, this study conducted quantitative analysis through OTCA and observed its predictive values on the disease.
In this study, the clinical characteristics of the objects were first observed, and the outcomes showing that the clinical data of the 2 groups of research objects had no significant statistical significance, which indicates that the baseline data of all the research objects are evenly distributed and comparable, also proves that the randomness characteristics of the study subjects' enrollment and means that the final results of this study are more reliable. In addition, the outcomes of the blood flow density experiment in this research showed that in comparison of the control one, the BFD of the superficial and deep capillaries in the observation one was less, which indicates that the BFD in the superficial retina after retinopathy in diabetic patients begins to be significantly decreased, and it is possible that as the disease progresses, the blood flow density may continue to be decreased, but this study did not conduct such analysis. Some studies suggest that there is a significant difference in paracentric concave, and subcentral concave BFD, and the BFD in the deep part is decreased more obviously with the increasing severity of the disease, and the BFD in the whole paracentric concave is decreased more obviously [21–22]. This is also somewhat similar to the outcomes of this research. In addition, the outcomes in the experiment of the retinal thickness showing that in comparison of the control one, the retinal thickness of the sufferers in the observation one was greater. The study showed that the comparative difference in the thickness of the central concave was the most significant, which is due to the reduction of retinal blood flow density, resulting in retinal tissue ischemia and hypoxia, secondary edema, and central concave traction. Because of the lower thickness of central concave itself, the change scope is more pronounced. In addition, the cone cells of central concave have powerful metabolic functions and are extremely sensitive to hypoxia. When there is circulatory disturbance, due to insufficient oxygen supply, the cone cells will accumulate a large number of metabolites, resulting in edema that is more pronounced than the surrounding area [23–24]. In order to verify the correlation between OCTA and diabetic retinopathy, this study conducted a correlation analysis, and the results showed that: the overall and paracentric concave of the blood flow density in the superficial capillary layer, the overall and paracentric concave, and subcentral concave of BFD in deep capillary layer, and the overall, central concave, paracentric concave, and subcentral concave of retinal thickness had a certain correlation with diabetic retinopathy (r=-0.645, -0.714, -0.827, -0.636, -0.620, 0.794, 0.863, 0.664, 0.674, P < 0.05). This shows that OCTA examination may be able to predict the disease; it shows that OCTA examination does have a high diagnostic value for retinopathy in patients with diabetic retinopathy. Early studies have found that OCTA image analysis has an exact diagnostic value for macular microvascular lesions in patients with diabetic retinopathy. OCTA subdivides the detection range with the center of the macular fovea, which can accurately reflect the hemorrhage in macular region in patients with diabetic retinopathy. Retinal surface capillaries can reveal the border of the avascular area of macular fovea. Due to the high definition and high measurement accuracy, the area, perimeter and shape indices of the macular foveal avascular zone can be understood. Analyzing the severity of capillary arch damage in the macular area facilitates the targeted scientific intervention [25–26]. Not only that, OCTA is a tool that can detect microvascular changes in diabetic retinopathy, including microvascular tumors, non-perfused areas, retinal edema, vascular rings, and intraretinal microvascular changes [27–28]. In addition, OCTA can also provide measurement and quantification of foveal avascular area, vessel density, perfusion density, etc. Changes in these measures of vascular function have almost universally been shown to be associated with increased severity of diabetic retinopathy and worsening vision [28–30]. These indicators may serve as potential biomarkers of diabetic retinopathy in different courses of disease, and are crucial for predicting the grade of diabetic retinopathy, identifying patients at risk, selecting treatment methods, and observing the effects of follow-up treatment. Therefore, based on this, the ROC curve was also drawn in this study to analyze the predictive values of OCTA for the disease. The results showed that the overall, central concave, paracentric concave, and subcentral concave of the BFD in superficial and deep capillary layer and retinal thickness all have certain predictive values for diabetic retinopathy, and AUC were: 0.888, 0.627, 0.923, 0.771, 0.983, 0.616, 0.882, 0.862, 960, 0.990, 0.897, 0.899, respectively, with good predictive values, indicating that is has a good clinical application value.
In summary, OCTA examination can clarify the changes of retinal BFD and retinal thickness, and the retinal BFD of the patients is decreased significantly, while the retinal thickness is increased, which may be able to monitor the severity of the patients' conditions, and OCTA examination can be used to predict the disease to a certain extent. It has a significant clinical application value, and it is recommended to be popularized and applied. However, this research is a retrospective analysis with a small sample size, so more samples need to be accumulated to analyze more detailed results, and the correlation between OCTA examination and the severity of the disease has not been analyzed, which needs to be further explored.