No abstract

he early diagnosis of corneal ectasia is of foremost importance in both screening for refractive surgery and the early treatment of keratoconus. Topography or tomography analysis using either videokeratography or optical coherence tomography instruments can help detect alteration in the shape of the cornea such as thinning and increased curvature. However, these instruments cannot measure the mechanical stability, which is thought to be the initiating event of the disease, even before notable changes in corneal morphology take place.1,2 For this reason, there has been increasing interest in developing instruments to measure the in vivo biomechanical properties of the cornea to aid the diagnosis of an ectasia in a "biomechanical" stage, when topography and tomography are nor-T ABSTRACT PURPOSE: To evaluate the ability of a new combined biomechanical index called the Corvis Biomechanical Index (CBI) based on corneal thickness profile and deformation parameters to separate normal from keratoconic patients.METHODS: Six hundred fifty-eight patients (329 eyes in each database) were included in this multicenter retrospective study. Patients from two clinics located on different continents were selected to test the capability of the CBI to separate healthy and keratoconic eyes in more than one ethnic group using the Corvis ST (Oculus Optikgeräte GmbH, Wetzlar, Germany). Logistic regression was employed to determine, based on Database 1 as the development dataset, the optimal combination of parameters to accurately separate normal from keratoconic eyes. The CBI was subsequently independently validated on Database 2. RESULTS:The CBI included several dynamic corneal response parameters: deformation amplitude ratio at 1 and 2 mm, applanation 1 velocity, standard deviation of deformation amplitude at highest concavity, Ambrósio's Relational Thickness to the horizontal profile, and a novel stiffness parameter. The receiver operating characteristic curve analysis of the training database showed an area under the curve of 0.983. With a cut-off value of 0.5, 98.2% of the cases were correctly classified with 100% specificity and 94.1% sensitivity. In the validation dataset, the same cut-off point correctly classified 98.8% of the cases with 98.4% specificity and 100% sensitivity. CONCLUSIONS:The CBI was shown to be highly sensitive and specific to separate healthy from keratoconic eyes. The presence of an external validation dataset confirms this finding and suggests the possible use of the CBI in everyday clinical practice to aid in the diagnosis of keratoconus.[J Refract Surg. 2016;32(12):803-810.]

The TBI generated by the RF/LOOCV provided greater accuracy for detecting ectasia than other techniques. The TBI was sensitive for detecting subclinical (fruste) ectasia among eyes with normal topography in very asymmetric patients. The TBI may also confirm unilateral ectasia, potentially characterizing the inherent ectasia susceptibility of the cornea, which should be the subject of future studies. [J Refract Surg. 2017;33(7):434-443.].

Keratoconic eyes demonstrated less resistance to deformation than normal eyes with similar IOP. The stiffness parameters may be useful in future biomechanical studies as potential biomarkers. [J Refract Surg. 2017;33(4):266-273.].