Imaging of vascular abnormalities in ocular surface disease

the vascular system of the ocular surface plays a central role in infectious, autoimmune, inflammatory, traumatic and neoplastic diseases. the development, application, and mon-itoring of treatments for vascular abnormalities depends on the in vivo analysis of the oc-ular surface vasculature. Until recently, ocular surface vascular imaging was confined to biomicroscopic and color photographic assessment, both limited by poor reproducibility and the inability to image lymphatic vasculature in vivo . the evolvement and clinical im-plementation of innovative imaging modalities including confocal microscopy, intravenous, and optical coherence tomography-based angiography now allows standardized quantita-tive and functional vascular assessment with potential applicability to automated analysis algorithms and diagnostics