OCT in Retinal Vein Occlusions

Retinal blood vessel disease encompasses a wide variety of vision-threatening conditions. Of these conditions, retinal vein occlusions are the most common. Vision loss can occur as a result of macular ischemia (loss of blood flow to the macula) or macular edema (fluid build-up at the macula). OCT is an imaging technology that can perform non-contact cross-sectional imaging of retinal and choroidal tissue structures in real time. It is similar to ultrasound imaging, except that OCT measures the intensity of reflected light rather than sound waves. The purpose of this study is to see if non-invasive OCT technology can changes due to retinal vein occlusions as well as the more invasive fluorescein angiography, which requires an injection of dye into the vein of an arm of a patient. The study will also compare the mapping of blood vessels (angiography) and loss of blood flow (ischemia) by fluorescein angiography and OCT. These studies will be evaluated to see how they relate to vision loss.