RESUMO
PURPOSE: To investigate the relationships between contrast sensitivity (CS), choriocapillaris perfusion and other structural optical coherence tomography (OCT) biomarkers in dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD). DESIGN: Cross-sectional, observational study. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred AMD eyes (22 early, 52 intermediate and 26 late) from 74 patients and 45 control eyes from 37 age-similar subjects. METHODS: All participants had visual acuity (VA) assessment, quantitative contrast sensitivity function (qCSF) testing, macular OCT, and 6x6-mm swept-source OCT angiography (OCTA) scans on the same day. OCT volumes were analyzed for subretinal drusenoid deposits and hyporeflective drusen cores, and to measure thickness of the outer nuclear layer (ONL). OCTA scans were utilized to calculate drusen volume, inner choroid flow deficit percentage (IC-FD%), and to measure the area of choroidal hypertransmission defects (HTD). IC-FD% was measured from a 16 µm-thick choriocapillaris slab after compensation and binarization with Phansalkar's method. Generalized linear mixed-effects models were used to evaluate the associations between functional and structural variables. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: To explore the associations between qCSF-measured CS, ICFD% and various AMD imaging biomarkers. RESULTS: AMD exhibited significantly reduced qCSF metrics eyes across all stages compared to controls. Univariate analysis revealed significant associations between various imaging biomarkers, reduced qCSF metrics and VA in both groups. Multivariate analysis confirmed that higher IC-FD% in the central 5 mm was significantly associated with decreases in all qCSF metrics in AMD eyes (ß= -0.74 to -0.25, all p<0.05), but not with VA (p>0.05). ONL thickness in the central 3 mm correlated with both VA (ß= 2.85, p<0.001) and several qCSF metrics (ß= 0.01-0.90, all p<0.05), especially in AMD eyes. Further, larger HTD areas were associated with decreased VA (ß=-0.89, p<0.001) and reduced CS at low-intermediate frequencies across AMD stages (ß= -0.30 to -0.29, p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The significant association between IC-FD% in the central 5 mm and qCSF-measured CS reinforces the hypothesis that decreased macular choriocapillaris perfusion contributes to visual function changes in AMD, which are more pronounced in CS than in VA.