Delia Cabrera Debuc

University of Miami | UM · Department of Ophthalmology

Purpose: There is abundant evidence on the benefits of physical activity on cardiovascular health. However, there are only few data on the acute effects of physical exercise on the retina and choroid. Our aim was the in vivo examination of chorioretinal alterations following short intense physical activity by spectral domain optical coherence tomo...

As the overall population's life expectancy rises, so does the prevalence of age‐related cognitive impairment (CI). Recent evidence has shown that cognitive impairment (CI) is not limited to the brain and affects the retina. In this study, we characterized dynamic retinal blood flow (RBF) patterns using the XyCAM RI (Vasoptic Medical, Inc.), a non‐...

Objective To update the consensus recommendations for reporting of quantitative optical coherence tomography (OCT) study results, thus revising the previously published Advised Protocol for OCT Study Terminology and Elements (APOSTEL) recommendations. Methods To identify studies reporting quantitative OCT results, we performed a PubMed search for...

Introduction: Ocular blood flow plays a critical role in eye health by nourishing the retinal and ocular tissues with oxygen and nutrients and removal of ocular metabolic waste. Imaging of retinal and optic blood flow may provide insights for early and more specific diagnoses of ocular vascular disorder and facilitate eye-based biomarkers applicab...

Aim: To evaluate a high-resolution functional imaging device that yields quantitative data regarding macular blood flow and capillary network features in eyes with diabetic retinopathy (DR). Methods: Prospective, cross-sectional comparative case-series in which blood flow velocities (BFVs) and non-invasive capillary perfusion maps (nCPMs) in mac...

The purpose of this study is to investigate predictive models for earlier diagnosis of cognitive impairment (CI) using the eye. Prospective age‐matched subjects (n = 69, 55+ years) w/o CI and the presence of any ophthalmic history were recruited. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores, retinal images (EasyScan, iOptics) and full‐field electroreti...

Patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) have almost a two‐fold greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Recent studies suggest that one link between the two conditions may be the processes underlying amyloidosis. Our previous studies have demonstrated that cognitive impairment (CI) is not limited to the brain but also affects the retina. In this...

The papers in this special son focus on This special issue invited contributions reporting on methodological breakthroughs in artificial intelligence in ophthalmology, and systems and insights that make use of large-scale datasets linking across multiple imaging modalities, image phenotyping, and imaging omics. These papers presented in this specia...

Retinal blood flow (RBF) information has the potential to offer insight into ophthalmic health and disease that is complementary to traditional anatomical biomarkers as well as to retinal perfusion information provided by fluorescence or optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A). The present study was performed to test the functional attribu...

Evidence is accumulating that cognitive function, and visual impairment may be related. In this pilot study, we investigated whether multifractal dimension and lacunarity analyses performed in sectoral regions of the retina may reveal changes in patients with cognitive impairment (CI) that may be masked in the study considering the whole retinal br...

Introduction: We propose a minimum data set framework for the acquisition and analysis of retinal images for the development of retinal Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers. Our goal is to describe methodology that will increase concordance across laboratories, so that the broader research community is able to cross-validate findings in parallel, a...

In the last 20 years, research focused on developing retinal imaging as a source of potential biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, has increased significantly. The Alzheimer's Association and the Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment, Disease Monitoring editorial team (companion journal to Alzheimer's & D...

p>In the last 20 years, research focused on developing retinal imaging as a source of potential biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, has increased significantly. The Alzheimer's Association and the Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment, Disease Monitoring editorial team (companion journal to Alzheimer's &...

In the last 20 years, research focused on developing retinal imaging as a source of potential biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, has increased significantly. The Alzheimer's Association and the Alzheimer's & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment, Disease Monitoring editorial team (companion journal to Alzheimer's & D...

The novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) began infecting humans in late 2019 and then turned into pandemic in the successive months spreading all over the world. At the beginning of July 2020, the global number of confirmed cases reported by the World Health Organization is above 10 million, with more than half million deaths and a rate of new cases o...

Dear Colleagues, The eye is a complex organ that is capable of turning light into sight, allowing us to interpret our surroundings by working similarly to the conventional camera, which gathers, focuses, and transmits light through a lens. Various analyses relying on image-processing algorithms have been proposed to efficiently examine subtle chan...

The changes of the retinal structure and microvasculature are seemingly correlated with neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular lesions, which in turn supports the view that the retina may serve as a window to the brain. It can be postulated that retinal microvascular structure could be mirroring that of the brain while the substructure of the retina...

Embryology and neurodevelopment of the eyes are crucial for a better understanding of neuro-ophthalmic disorders. The field of pediatric neuro-ophthalmology has burgeoned over the past decade due to the more available diagnostic and therapeutic tools. This multidisciplinary field requires the collaborative work of a geneticist, pediatric ophthalmol...

The last decade has seen a substantial increase in research focused on the identification, development, and validation of diagnostic and prognostic retinal biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Sensitive retinal biomarkers may be advantageous because they are cost and time efficient, non-invasive, and present a minimal degree of patient risk and...

Ocular biomarkers Guest Editor: Delia Cabrera DeBuc – University of Miami, USA The eye is a potential source of biomarkers for ocular diseases as well as systemic and neurodegenerative conditions. This Collection seeks to bring together multidisciplinary studies of ocular biomarkers and their application to early detection and diagnosis, therapeut...

The development of effective therapies for cognitive impairment (CI), especially due to Alzheimer’s disease, demands diagnosing the condition during the prodromal phase. The diagnosis of CI involves expensive and invasive methods, such as positron emission tomography and cerebrospinal fluid assessment via spinal tap. Hence, a comparatively lower co...

We look at the recent application of deep learning (DL) methods in automated fine-grained segmentation of spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) images of the retina. We describe a new method combining fully convolutional networks (FCN) with Gaussian Processes for post processing. We report performance comparisons between the proposed a...

This review will highlight recent insights into measuring retinal structure in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). A growing body of evidence indicates that disturbances in retinal blood flow and structure are related to cognitive function, which can severely impair vision. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an optical imaging technology that may allow re...

Understanding the underlying theory of medical imaging acquisition helps interpretation of the features manifested in the images and also gives guidance in developing medical image analysis methods. This chapter introduces the development and principles of retinal OCT imaging, and also explains the OCT features of multiple retinal structures.

Successful retinal layer segmentation allows quantitative studies of the retinal structures based on OCT images, which mainly refer to the layer thickness measurements and morphology analyses. The aim of this chapter is to summarize the diagnostic capability of OCT based quantitative analysis for various eye diseases and additional factors affectin...

Alzheimers disease (AD) is the most common progressive neurodegenerative illness and cause of dementia in the elderly. The critical barriers for primary prevention in AD are the lack of rapid, non-invasive, sensitive and low-cost biomarkers. As the eye and brain share essential structural and pathogenic pathways, non-invasive eye biomarkers could b...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an important retinal imaging method since it is a non-invasive, high-resolution imaging technique and is able to reveal the fine structure within the human retina. It has applications for retinal as well as neurological disease characterization and diagnostics. The use of machine learning techniques for analyzi...

Introduction The prevalence of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in patients with non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy (NAION) is 55.6 to 89%. The prevalence of NAION in patients with OSA has yet to be determined. Identifying clinical features that will predispose patients with OSA to developing NAION would improve morbidity and recurrence...

Purpose Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a microvascular disease characterized by capillary dropout and resultant retinal ischemia which then leads to retinal vascular remodeling. Our goal was to assess blood flow velocities in retinal collateral vessels in healthy and diabetic subjects with various stages of DR. Methods In our pilot study, we enrolled...

Background: There is paucity of data on non-glaucomatous optic neuropathy (NGON) from low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). This study was conducted with a purpose to collect a variety of NGON in the adult population. Methods: This was a hospital-based cross-sectional study conducted between June 2016 - December 2016. All adult patients diagnose...

Previous studies have demonstrated that cognitive impairment (CI) is not limited to the brain but also affects the retina. In this pilot study, we investigated the correlation between the retinal vascular complexity and neurodegenerative changes in patients with CI using a low-cost multimodal approach. Quantification of the retinal structure and fu...

Previous studies have demonstrated that cognitive impairment (CI) is not limited to the brain but also affects the retina. In this pilot study, we investigated the correlation between the retinal vascular complexity and neurodegenerative changes in patients with CI using a low-cost multimodal approach. Quantification of the retinal structure and fu...

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is an extremely severe and common degenerative disease. The purpose of this study was to quantify the relationship between various parameters including the Foveal Avascular Zone (FAZ) morphology, retinal layer thickness, and retinal hemodynamic properties in healthy controls and patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) with an...

Purpose: To compare thickness and reflectance of retinal layer findings in patients with idiopathic epiretinal membranes (ERMs) before and after surgery with those of normal controls. Design: Retrospective study. Participants: Patients with ERMs before and after surgery and healthy controls. Methods: Spectral-domain (SD) OCT imaging of eyes...

In this study, we examined the relationship between the fractal dimension (FD), the morphology of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) and the macular circulation in healthy controls and patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) with and with no diabetic retinopathy (DR). Cross-sectional data of 47 subjects were analyzed from a 5-year longitudinal s...

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the leading causes of vision loss globally with a severe burden on all societies due to its high treatment and rehabilitation costs. The early diagnosis of DR may provide preventive steps (including retinal laser therapy and tight carbohydrate, blood pressure, and cholesterol control) that could in turn help to a...

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) is an extremely severe and common degenerative disease. The purpose of this study was to quantify the relationship between various parameters including the Foveal Avascular Zone (FAZ) morphology, retinal layer thickness, and retinal hemodynamic properties in healthy controls and patients with diabetes mellitus (DM) with an...

Our objective is to evaluate the efficacy of methods that use deep learning (DL) for the automatic fine-grained segmentation of optical coherence tomography (OCT) images of the retina. OCT images from 10 patients with mild non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy were used from a public (U. of Miami) dataset. For each patient, five images were availa...

Background and objectives: Several imaging modalities have been developed to characterize ischemia inherent in retinal vascular diseases. This study aims to predict the impact and to better establish the mechanisms of visual deterioration. A high-resolution functional imaging device is used, yielding quantitative data for macular blood flow and ca...

Buy Article Permissions and Reprints Introduction The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is important in the understanding of retinal degenerations and aging [1]. It has many different roles, one of them being the primary site of synthesis of the 11-cis retinal that is required for the regeneration of bleached visual cycle photopigment. It is also k...

Buy Article Permissions and Reprints Introduction Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has become an invaluable tool in ophthalmic decision making, driven in large part by the onset of modern intravitreal pharmacotherapies [1]. There are several artifacts potentially involved in the interpretation process of OCT scans, most of these are influenced b...

Reliable retinal layer thickness measurements using optical coherence tomography (OCT) are important to track the subtle retinal changes in longitudinal studies. A total of 10 eyes (5 healthy subjects, 40±13 years old) were enrolled to study the inter-session repeatability and identify the pitfalls affecting the reliabilities. Each eye was scanned...

In the ophthalmic research, the measurement of the retinal thickness is usually employed for characterizing the structural changes of the retinal tissue. However, changes in the fractal dimension (FD) may provide additional information regarding the structure of the retinal layers and their early damage in ocular diseases. In the present paper, we...

Increasing evidence suggests that the conditions of retinal microvessels are indicators to a variety of cerebrovascular, neurodegenerative, psychiatric and developmental diseases. Thus, non-invasive visualization of the human retinal microcirculation offers an exceptional opportunity for the investigation of not only the retinal but also cerebral m...

In the years since its introduction, retinal imaging has transformed our capability to visualize the posterior pole of the eye. Increasing practical advances in mobile technology, regular monitoring, and population screening for diabetic retinopathy management offer the opportunity for further development of cost-effective applications through remo...

Purpose: The purpose of our study was to investigate the potential pitfalls associated with different vessel segmentation methods using the built-in software of the Retinal Function Imager (RFI) for the analysis of retinal blood flow velocity (BFV). Methods: Ten eyes of nine healthy subjects were enrolled in the study. Retinal blood flow measure...

Over the past two decades a significant number of OCT segmentation approaches have been proposed in the literature. Each methodology has been conceived for and/or evaluated using specific datasets that do not reflect the complexities of the majority of widely available retinal features observed in clinical settings. In addition, there does not exis...

Background: The transparent ocular structure enables quantitative analysis of microvasculature of retina, a neuronal tissue affected by multiple sclerosis (MS). Objective: The aim of this study was to determine whether the retinal blood flow velocity and flow volume at the macula are impaired in patients with relapsing remitting multiple scleros...

Aim: To compare thickness and reflectivity spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) findings in patients with idiopathic epiretinal membranes (ERMs), before and after ERM peeling surgery, with normal controls. Methods: A retrospective study analyzed SD-OCTs of eyes with ERMs undergoing ERM peeling surgery by one surgeon from 2008 to...

Purpose: To assess the differences in texture descriptors and optical properties of retinal tissue layers in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and to evaluate their usefulness in the detection of neurodegenerative changes using optical coherence tomography (OCT) image segmentation. Patients and methods: 38 patients with MS were examined usin...

Results of thickness measurements of intraretinal layer of the subjects. Sheet 1. Distribution statistics of the thickness (μm) of intraretinal layers by study group represented as means ± SD and p values of the comparison between study groups. Sheet 2–6. The results organized by study groups and regions. (XLSX)

Demographical data and results of visual acuity test of the patients with multiple sclerosis (MS, Table A) and control subjects (Table B.). The disease duration and time from the last MS associated optic neuritis (MSON) was measured by month. It was calculated from July if only the year of ON episode was known. In those cases, when the ON episode w...

Results of contrast calculations of intraretinal layer of the subjects. Sheet 1. Distribution statistics of the contrast (a.u.) of intraretinal layers by study group represented as means ± SD and p values of the comparison between study groups. Sheet 2–6. The results organized by study groups and regions. (XLSX)

Results of total reflectance measurements of intraretinal layer of the subjects. Sheet 1. Distribution statistics of the total reflectance (dB) of intraretinal layers by study group represented as means ± SD and p values of the comparison between study groups. Sheet 2–6. The results organized by study groups and regions. Abbreviations used in the t...

Results of fractal dimension calculations of intraretinal layer of the subjects. Sheet 1. Distribution statistics of the fractal dimension (a.u.) of intraretinal layers by study group represented as means ± SD and p values of the comparison between study groups. Sheet 2–6. The results organized by study groups and regions. (XLSX)

Results of layer index calculations of intraretinal layer of the subjects. Sheet 1. Distribution statistics of the layer index (a.u.) of intraretinal layers by study group represented as means ± SD and p values of the comparison between study groups. Sheet 2–6. The results organized by study groups and regions. (XLSX)

The study of retinal hemodynamics plays an important role to understand the onset and progression of diabetic retinopathy which is a leading cause of blindness in American adults. In this work, we developed an interactive retinal analysis tool to quantitatively measure the blood flow velocity (BFV) and blood flow rate (BFR) in the macular region us...

Purpose: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of axial length (AL) on the thickness of intraretinal layers in the macula using optical coherence tomography (OCT) image analysis. Methods: Fifty three randomly selected eyes of 53 healthy subjects were recruited for this study. The median age of the participants was 29 years (range: 6 t...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory demyelinating disorder of the central nervous system characterized by progressive neurodegeneration. Current management aims to reduce the inflammation through immunomodulation. However, the effectiveness of these treatments for preventing degeneration is unclear. Vascular alterations, which may be caused...

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a high speed, high resolution and non-invasive imaging modality that enables the capturing of the 3D structure of the retina. The fast and automatic analysis of 3D volume OCT data is crucial taking into account the increased amount of patient-specific 3D imaging data. In this work, we have developed an automati...

This study determined (1) how many vessels (i.e., the vessel sampling) are needed to reliably characterize the bulbar conjunctival microvasculature and (2) if characteristic information can be obtained from the distribution histogram of the blood flow velocity and vessel diameter. Functional slitlamp biomicroscope was used to image hundreds of venu...

Novel Methods and Diagnostic Tools in Diabetic Retinopathy. http://www.retinalphysician.com/articleviewer.aspx?articleID=112384