Analyzing proliferation risk in diabetic retinopathy based on noninvasive imaging of retinal oxygen metabolism

Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is one of the major complications of both type I and II diabetic, also a leading cause of blindness in US. The current diagnosis of DR is based on the abnormal retinal microvasculatures or neoangiogenesis mostly present at the proliferative stage when the retinal impair is irreversible and incurable. There is no existing method to diagnose DR at its non-proliferative stage before the microvasculature is altered. We propose to develop a dual-beam dual-band optical coherence tomography (dd-OCT) to fully quantify the oxygen metabolic rate in human retinal circulation. And also we hypothesize that the quantification of the oxygen metabolism can be used as a diagnostic tool to early DR. The proposed work would greatly benefit both type I and II patients in the regard of early diagnosis, intervention and treatment and eventually prevent the blindness caused by DR.