A new study¹ by the Centre for Public Health at the Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has shown that multicolour imaging has a higher sensitivity for detecting early age-related macular degeneration (AMD) compared to colour fundus photography (CFP).
The study which used a sample of 105 eyes and the Spectralis Diagnostic Imaging Platform muliticolour option, was led by Professor Usha Chakravarthy.
“This systematic analysis of colour fundus photography versus multicolour demonstrated the robustness of multicolour imaging in the detection of early AMD features,” she said. “The ability to delineate atrophy and fibrosis in late stage AMD gives added value in the clinical setting, as these components of the wet AMD lesion have an important impact on visual function.”
In cases with discrepancies, an analysis of OCT also showed better agreement with multicolour for all AMD lesions, with the exception of haemorrhage and non-geographic atrophy hypopigmentation. For pigment clumping, CFP and multicolour were in equal agreement to OCT, the study found. Multicolour imaging was able to identify soft drusen in 85% of the eyes studied, reticular drusen in 83% and atrophy and fibrosis in 100% of cases where these abnormalities were seen on CFP. When using multicolour as the basis for analysis, however, CFP was less sensitive. In this study, soft drusen were identified in only 58%, reticular drusen in 28%, atrophy in 83%, and fibrosis in 68% of the cases where such changes were seen on multicolour images.
Dr Jim Borthwick of Southern Eye said he’s been using the Spectralis multicolour module for nearly three years and is impressed with its capabilities for macular degeneration. “It is great. I’ve found it very useful for macular degeneration because it shows up the deeper layers.”
