Fig 1.
Slit-lamp photography of a cornea with EBMD.
Fingerprint lines, geographic map-like lines, and epithelial dot are designated by arrows.
Fig 2.
Spectral-domain optical coherence tomography B-scan of cornea with EBMD.
A: Presence of an irregular and thickened epithelial basement membrane with duplication associated with undulation and elevation of the corneal epithelial layer. B: Presence of a thickened and hyperreflective basement membrane. C: Presence of hyper-reflective dots in the middle of the corneal epithelial layer.
Fig 3.
Representative corneal OCT epithelium thickness maps (left) and scatter metre analysis with the OQAS (right) of a normal patient (top), dry eye patient (middle) and an EBMD patient (bottom).
Table 1.
Characteristics of enrolled subjects.
Fig 4.
Epithelial thickness comparison between the EBMD (red), dry eye (green) and normal groups (blue).
All units in μm. Min, minimum; Max, maximum; Sup, superior thickness; Inf, inferior.
Fig 5.
Irregularity (A) and difference between inferior and superior corneal epithelium thicknesses (inf−sup) (B) comparison between the EBMD, dry eye and normal groups.
Table 2.
Corneal epithelial thicknesses (in μm) in the EBMD, dry eye and normal groups, as measured by optical coherence tomography.
Fig 6.
Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis for EBMD detection using irregularity of the epithelial thickness.
AUC, area under the ROC curve. For the optimised cut-off criterion of irregularity >3.1, the sensitivity was 0.82 and specificity 0.89.
Fig 7.
Quality of vision (OSI) (A) and best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA) (B) comparison between the EBMD, dry eye and normal groups.
Fig 8.
Correlation between epithelium thickness mapping and quality of vision.
Top: Correlations between quality of vision (OSI), central epithelium thickness (A) and irregularity of the epithelial thickness (B). Bottom: Correlations between best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), central epithelium thickness (C) and irregularity of the epithelial thickness (D).
Table 3.
Correlation tables between irregularity of the epithelial thickness, central epithelium thickness, quality of vision (OSI) and best-corrected visual acuity (-LogMar AV).