Research project Can we improve understanding of the pathophysiology and pathogenesis of glaucoma and understand how blood flow to the eye interacts with the ocular biomechanical properties?
The main purpose of this project is to investigate the relationships between the blood flow of the ophthalmic artery (OA) and structural alterations of the optic nerve (ON) and dynamics of intraocular pressure (IOP) in patients with glaucoma and ocular hypertension. Our motivation is to improve knowledge of the pathophysiology and pathogenesis of glaucoma and understand how the blood flow towards the eye interacts with structural properties of ON and IOP. We aim to develop new glaucoma biomarkers based on advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques, phase-contrast (PC-MRI) and diffusion tensor (DT-MRI), which we hope can be used to predict the development and the progression of the disease. This project is important because glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness in the world and the exact mechanisms of glaucomatous damages are still unknown. In the present project our main hypothesis is that the structural alterations of the ON seen at early stage of glaucoma disease is caused by abnormal blood flow volume pulsatility of OA. We plan to test this hypothesis with our optimized method and workflow to combine the OA blood flow and the structural properties of the ON, based on MRI techniques, together with measurements of IOP and its pulsation during ophthalmology examination. We will specifically investigate the response of OA blood flow and ON to an intervention with reduction of IOP in patients. The main objective of this project is to determine the response of the ophthalmic artery blood flow, the ocular rigidity and the white matter ON integrity to a reduction in IOP in glaucoma and intraocular hypertension
ALF, 2014: SEK 400,000
