Plane wave Doppler determination of blood flow in retinopathy of prematurity

Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is a disorder affecting low birthweight, preterm neonates. In the preterm eye, the retina is not fully developed and neovascularization may occur at the margin between the developed vascular retina and undeveloped avascular retina. Without timely treatment by laser or intravitreal anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) therapy, this can lead to tractional retinal detachment and blindness. Visualization of the retina in regular examinations by indirect ophthalmoscopy is hence the current standard of care, but the exams are stressful and interpretation of images is subjective.
The upregulation of VEGF in ROP would suggest an increase in ocular blood flow. In this report, we evaluate the potential of ultrafast plane-wave Doppler ultrasound (PWU) to detect increased flow velocities in the orbital vessels supplying the eye in a gentle exam with objective findings.
We imaged both eyes of 50 low-birthweight preterm neonates using 18 MHz PWU. Flow veloci..., Neonate subjects were inpatients in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
Inclusion criteria: Neonates with a birth weight of ≤1500g or a gestational age of ≤30 weeks.
Exclusion criteria: Presence of other congenital ophthalmic disease or cardiovascular disease; prior treatment with laser or intravitreal anti-VEGF agents.
A total of 50 low-birthweight, preterm neonates (100 eyes) were examined. 30 had follow-up exams approximately 2 weeks after their initial exam.
ROP Stage, Zone, and presence of plus disease in each eye were determined by an experienced retinal specialist by indirect ophthalmoscopic examination as defined by the International Committee for the Classification of Retinopathy of Prematurity while masked to the PWU results.
We performed PWU using a Vantage-128 (Verasonics, Inc., Kirkland, WA)  research ultrasound system with a Verasonics L22-14vXLF linear array probe. The probe had an 18-MHz center frequency, 128 piezoelectric elements, a 12.8 mm aperture, and an elevat..., , # Data from: Plane wave Doppler determination of blood flow in retinopathy of prematurity

Statistical analysis was performed using IBM SPSS Version 29 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY).

ANOVA, with post-hoc Dunnett’s test, was used to compare Doppler parameters between ROP Stages for each vessel. Because each eye was classified and imaged separately, we treated each eye as a separate case. However, recognizing that eyes of a given subject tend to be correlated, we additionally performed the analysis separately for right and left eyes.

ANOVA was also performed to evaluate the presence of preplus disease and Zone on flow.

Stepwise linear discriminant analysis was used to produce multivariate classification models to distinguish Stage 3 with respect to Stages 0-2. *A priori *probabilities for group membership were set equal. Classification accuracy was assessed and validated by a leave-one-out procedure. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed to evaluate the effectiveness ...