Image Artifacts in Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography Among Patients With Multiple Sclerosis

ABSTRACTPurpose: To evaluate artifacts in optical coherence tomography angiography (OCT-A) images of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and healthy controls.Materials and methods: This was a prospective cross-sectional study conducted at the Department of Neurology and the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Subjects included patients with an established diagnosis of MS and healthy volunteers. OCT-A was performed using Spectralis® OCT-A prototype, OCT2 (Heidelberg, Germany). The type and frequency of artifacts, the clinical factors associated with them, and their impact on vessel density measurements were assessed.Results: Overall, 385 images from 102 participants were analyzed. The majority of images (97.1%) had some degree of artifact. The most frequent was motion artifact (96.3%), followed by blinking (51.9%), and loss of focus (25.1%). MS patients were more likely to have any artifact vs. controls (OR [95% CI], 3.83 [1.12–12.92]), and were more likely to have motion artifacts with longer dis...