Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Purpose: To develop quantitative biomarkers that characterize the effect of upper eyelid motion (lid-wiper effect) during blinking on corneal epithelial thickness. Design: A retrospective study analyzing corneal epithelium thickness maps through Zernike polynomial decomposition. Subjects: Three hundred thirty-six maps from 135 healthy eyes of 69 subjects. Methods: A total of 5-mm diameter epithelial thickness maps were acquired using spectral-domain OCT. Maps from left eyes were mirror-imaged and pooled with right eyes for analysis. Zernike polynomial decomposition was performed, and average coefficients were obtained. The lowest-order Zernike terms with single-angle dependence-tilt and primary coma-were analyzed as vectors to determine the lid-wiper axes. The lid-wiper gradient (μm/mm) and lid-wiper coma (μm) were calculated by projecting the tilt and coma vectors along their lid-wiper axes. Correlation analysis was performed between the lid-wiper gradient and lid-wiper coma, primary astigmatism, and higher-order aberrations. Main Outcome Measures: The lid-wiper gradient and lid-wiper coma, which are quantitative biomarkers of epithelial remodeling in response to the lid-wiper effect. Results: = 0.001). Conclusions: A significant epithelial thickness gradient exists in the average normal cornea, consistent with eyelid blink dynamics described in the literature. The significant but weak correlation between the lid-wiper gradient and coma suggests the lid-wiper effect may be among various factors contributing to higher-order aberrations in the epithelium. The lid-wiper gradient and coma may serve as quantitative biomarkers of epithelial remodeling in response to the lid-wiper effect. Financial Disclosures: Proprietary or commercial disclosure may be found in the Footnotes and Disclosures at the end of this article.
Yazbeck et al. (Tue,) studied this question.