Abstract

The Relationship between Tear Film Scattering and Optical Quality in children with Dry Eye Disease

Jin Zhao: zj49@mynsu.nova.edu

Lu Zhou: zhoulugigi@163.com

Zhijun Chen: jsxyczj@sina.com

Bin Zhang: bz52@nova.edu

Affiliations:

College of Optometry, Nova Southeastern University

Department of Ophthalmology, Children's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University

Environmental risk factors, such as prolonged use of digital devices, greatly increase the dry eye disease (DED) incidence in the younger population. Young children often have difficulty describing their subjective visual experiences precisely. Therefore, this study aims to test if the optical quality impairment quantified by an objective method is significantly related to the tear film scattering and increased with DED severity. A total of 112 children with DED, aged between 5 to 15 years, were recruited from Nanjing Children's Hospital and assigned to mild, moderate, and control groups. The diagnoses were based on the 2013 Chinese General Consensus on DED Diagnosis. After complete blinks, optical quality was evaluated with double-pass technology to detect the cutoff frequency of the modulation transfer function (MTF cutoff) and the Strehl ratio (SR). The dynamic changes of the ocular light scatter were captured by the tear film mean-objective scatter index (TFM-OSI) and their standard deviation (SD-OSI). Only the right eye data were taken into analysis, and a one-way ANOVA test was used for inter-group comparison. The MTF cutoff was significantly reduced in children with DED, and so was the SR. TMF-OSI and SD-OSI increased. MTF cutoff was negatively related to TFM-OSI. In children with DED, optical quality impairment was significantly associated with tear film scattering and significantly increased with the severity of the disease.

KEYWORDS: Dry eye; Children; Double-pass technology; OSI; Optical quality.