Maloca PM, Spaide RF, Rothenbuehler S, Scholl HPN, Heeren T, Ramos de Carvalho JE, Okada M, Hasler PW, Egan C, Tufail A. Acta Ophthalmol. 2017 Nov 13. doi: 10.1111/aos.13567.
PURPOSE. To demonstrate the feasibility of three dimensional (3D) printing of macular Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA).
METHODS. 9 Nine repeated and tracked OCTA measurements were performed on one healthy eye of a 35 year old emmetropic female with Zeiss Cirrus HD-OCT Modell 5000 with AngioPlex (Review software 9.5). For the enhanced OCTA, OCTA data were exported and volume rendered. Volumes were aligned and averaged in one final enhanced resolution OCTA volume (erOCTA). For the 3D printing, single volume rendering was tested and freed from speckle noise using a recently developed 3D denoiser. A 3D mesh was calculated and vessel gaps were manually sealed manually to produce a printable prototype. One model was printed in 3D in transparent resin and the surface covered with 24 karat gold.
RESULTS. The proposed method allowed 3D printing of OCTA data. 3D OCTA volume rendering showed signal protrusions of different size and shape (“OCTA warts”) and small defects in visualizing flow as little dents.
CONCLUSION. The developed method provided a potentially useful tool for 3D printing and 3D analysis of OCTA.
3D print healthy retina vessels (with transparent red resin (300 x 300 x 28 mm). © 2017 OCTlab University of Basel, Switzerland. All rights reserved.