Abstract

Retinal detachment results in visual loss and requires surgical treatment. The risk of retinal detachment depends, among other factors, on the vitreous rheology, which varies with age. To date, the viscoelasticity of the vitreous body has only been measured in cadaver eyes. However, the ex vivo and in vivo viscoelasticity may differ as a result of the effect of intravitreal membranes. Therefore, an MRI method and appropriate postprocessing tools were developed to determine the vitreous deformation and viscoelastic properties in the eyes of living humans. Nineteen subjects (eight women and 11 men; mean age, 33 years; age range, 14-62 years) gazed at a horizontal sinusoidal moving target during the segmented acquisition of complementary spatial modulation of magnetization images. The center of the lens and the scleral insertion of the optic nerve defined the imaging plane. The vitreous deformation was tracked with a dedicated algorithm and fitted with the commonly used viscoelastic model to determine the model parameters: the modified Womersley number a and the phase angle b. The vitreous deformation was successfully quantified in all 17 volunteers having a monophasic vitreous. The mean and standard deviation of the model parameters were determined to be 5.5 ± 1.3 for a and -2.3 ± 0.2 for b. The correlation coefficient (-0.76) between a and b was significant. At the eye movement frequency used, the mean storage and loss moduli of the vitreous were around 3 ± 1 hPa. For two subjects, the vitreous deformation was clearly polyphasic: some compartments of the vitreous were gel-like and others were liquefied. The borders of these compartments corresponded to reported intravitreal membrane patterns. Thus, the deformation of the vitreous can now be determined in situ, leaving the structure of the intravitreal membranes intact. Their effect on vitreous dynamics challenges actual vitreous viscoelastic models. The determination of the vitreous deformation will aid in the quantification of local vitreous stresses and their correlation with retinal detachment.