OCT Applications in Conjunctival Disease

*Raffaele Piscopo, Michele Lanza, Luigi Mele and Mario Bifani Sconocchia*

## **Abstract**

Today the of anterior segment optical coherence tomography (ASOCT) has become an irreplaceable tool in the management of various pathologies and also in many surgical techniques. The cornea has been widely studied in many pathologies with ASOCT, but now also the conjunctival study with ASOCT allows to obtain a detailed imaging of the normal and pathological conjunctiva, so that in many conjunctival diseases the ASOCT is a useful tool to help the clinicians. In this chapter we will briefly discuss the results of the imaging of the oct appearance of the normal conjunctiva with ASOCT and its present and potential use in the conjunctival pathologies.

**Keywords:** anterior segment OCT, conjunctival diseases, conjunctiva, conjunctival tumors, optical coherence tomography

#### **1. Introduction**

The clinical application of ocular coherence tomography (OCT) and angio-OCT is today increasing and their use is not only focused on the retina so that, since the introduction of anterior OCT in the late 1990s, many other ocular pathologies of the eye have also been studied.

Today anterior segment OCT (ASOCT) is mainly used in corneal pathology since several years and its use is necessary in the management of the clinical and surgical activities [1–4].

Today there are different models of ASOCT and they can be mainly classified on the basis of the type of technology used to perform the scan: the time-domain technology, the spectral-domain technology, the swept source and, lately, also the angio-OCT study of the conjunctival and scleral vessel has been studied.

The aim and the ideal use of ASOCT in the anterior segment, especially in the conjunctiva, is to give an "optical biopsy" which can help the clinician in several ways: to distinguish among the various conjunctival tumors, to assess if a certain surgical technique has been effective or, in the future, to distinguish in the early stage between a neoplastic and inflammatory conjunctival disease.

The studies which discuss the use of such technologies have been focused on three main areas of interest: the characterization of the normal human conjunctiva with its possible variations, the use in the glaucoma filtering surgery and the study of the conjunctival pathologies.
