Research News

NIH Awards Funding for Pilot Research that will Help Understand Oxygen Delivery and its Role in Retinal Disease

The National Eye Institute has awarded funding for a pilot research study to explore the role of oxygen delivery to the retina and its implication in retinal diseases.

Mahnaz Shahidi, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, and director of the Applied Physics Laboratory is principal investigator for the project, entitled “Noninvasive Imaging of Chorio-retinal Oxygen Tension.”

Retinal hypoxia – a reduction in the delivery of oxygen to the retina – is implicated in diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration. The research project will improve understanding of the role of oxygen delivery to the retinal tissue in the development and progression of both diseases.

The relative contribution of the blood vessels within the retinal tissue and those of the choroid – a layer of vascular tissue external to the retina – to the oxygenation of the retina, in health and disease, is not sufficiently understood. Development of a novel noninvasive optical imaging system will allow for the first time to differentially measure oxygen tension in the retinal and choroidal vasculatures in vivo.