Purpose. To investigate the phosphorylation of the heavy neurofilament subunit (NF-H), which could be deeply involved in axonal transport of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), in an experimental glaucoma model of chronic elevation of intraocular pressure (IOP) in monkeys. methods. One eye in adult monkeys was randomly selected for laser treatment, and IOP was maintained between 30 and 40 mm Hg throughout the experiment. The eyeballs with the optic nerve and optic chiasm were enucleated as one tissue and were subject to immunocytochemical observation, using two NF-H–specific antibodies, NF-200 and SMI31. NF-200 reacts with both phosphorylated and dephosphorylated NF-H, whereas SMI reacts only with phosphorylated NF-H. Ratios of SMI31-positive to NF-200-positive areas were calculated for quantitative evaluation of phosphorylation status. Specimens from the retina, lamina cribrosa (LC), post-LC, and optic chiasm were evaluated separately. Phosphorylation of NF-H at the retina and optic nerve head was compared between specimens from temporal retina and nasal retina, or between temporal and nasal regions of the optic disc. The status of phosphorylation was confirmed by Western blot analysis. results. An enlargement of the disc cup was observed on the temporal side, and the superior and inferior poles were preferentially involved in the neuronal damage in laser-treated eyes. Most NF-Hs in the control eyes were phosphorylated in all investigated regions, whereas those in the glaucomatous eyes were significantly dephosphorylated, and NF-Hs in the temporal region were significantly dephosphorylated compared with those in the nasal region. At the optic chiasm, NF-Hs in axons traveling from laser-treated eyes were highly dephosphorylated, and the extent of NF-H dephosphorylation corresponded to the degree of glaucoma-induced axonal damage. Western blot analysis showed the change in the phosphorylation of NF-Hs. conclusions. NF-Hs in RGC axons are dephosphorylated by elevated IOP, which may be deeply involved in glaucoma-induced damage to axonal transport.

Several image recoloring methods have been proposed to compensate for the loss of contrast caused by color vision deficiency (CVD). However, these methods only work for dichromacy (a case in which one of the three types of cone cells loses its function completely), while the majority of CVD is anomalous trichromacy (another case in which one of the three types of cone cells partially loses its function). In this paper, a novel degree-adaptable recoloring algorithm is presented, which recolors images by minimizing an objective function constrained by contrast enhancement and naturalness preservation. To assess the effectiveness of the proposed method, a quantitative evaluation using common metrics and subjective studies involving 14 volunteers with varying degrees of CVD are conducted. The results of the evaluation experiment show that the proposed personalized recoloring method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods, achieving desirable contrast enhancement adapted to different degrees of CVD while preserving naturalness as much as possible.

Aim To develop an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm that diagnoses cataracts/corneal diseases from multiple conditions using smartphone images. Methods This study included 6442 images that were captured using a slit-lamp microscope (6106 images) and smartphone (336 images). An AI algorithm was developed based on slit-lamp images to differentiate 36 major diseases (cataracts and corneal diseases) into 9 categories. To validate the AI model, smartphone images were used for the testing dataset. We evaluated AI performance that included sensitivity, specificity and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve for the diagnosis and triage of the diseases. Results The AI algorithm achieved an area under the ROC curve of 0.998 (95% CI, 0.992 to 0.999) for normal eyes, 0.986 (95% CI, 0.978 to 0.997) for infectious keratitis, 0.960 (95% CI, 0.925 to 0.994) for immunological keratitis, 0.987 (95% CI, 0.978 to 0.996) for cornea scars, 0.997 (95% CI, 0.992 to 1.000) for ocular surface tumours, 0.993 (95% CI, 0.984 to 1.000) for corneal deposits, 1.000 (95% CI, 1.000 to 1.000) for acute angle-closure glaucoma, 0.992 (95% CI, 0.985 to 0.999) for cataracts and 0.993 (95% CI, 0.985 to 1.000) for bullous keratopathy. The triage of referral suggestion using the smartphone images exhibited high performance, in which the sensitivity and specificity were 1.00 (95% CI, 0.478 to 1.00) and 1.00 (95% CI, 0.976 to 1.000) for ‘urgent’, 0.867 (95% CI, 0.683 to 0.962) and 1.00 (95% CI, 0.971 to 1.000) for ‘semi-urgent’, 0.853 (95% CI, 0.689 to 0.950) and 0.983 (95% CI, 0.942 to 0.998) for ‘routine’ and 1.00 (95% CI, 0.958 to 1.00) and 0.896 (95% CI, 0.797 to 0.957) for ‘observation’, respectively. Conclusions The AI system achieved promising performance in the diagnosis of cataracts and corneal diseases.

We compared the short-term outcomes between 3-monthly aflibercept and brolucizumab injections for treatment-naïve polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV). A total of 52 eyes were included. Patients received 3 monthly intravitreal aflibercept (n = 38) or intravitreal brolucizumab (n = 14). Indocyanine green angiography (ICGA) was performed at baseline and at the 3-month visit. Selection of anti-VEGF agents depended on time. In the brolucizumab-treated group, best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) improved from 0.27 ± 0.34 (log MAR unit) at baseline to 0.20 ± 0.24 at 3-month visit, which is comparable with the aflibercept-treated group (p = 0.87), after adjustment of confounding factors. Central retinal thickness significantly decreased by 43%−44% in both groups. Subfoveal choroidal thickness also significantly decreased by 20.5% during this interval in the brolucizumab-treated group, which was greater than the aflibercept-treated group. The complete resolution rate of polypoidal lesions on ICGA was significantly higher (p = 0.043) in the brolucizumab-treated group (78.6%) than in the aflibercept-treated group (42.1%). Intraocular inflammation was observed in 14.3% (2/14) in the brolucizumab-treated group only. In short-term follow-up, intravitreal injection of 3-monthly brolucizumab was comparable with aflibercept in terms of BCVA and morphological improvement along with higher resolution of polypoidal lesion(s) on ICGA.