New possibilities for assessing of the choroid condition in melanoma

Relevance At the initial stages of melanoma (MC) development, the choroid is gradually involved in the process [1]. One of the biomarkers for assessing the condition of the choroid is the choroidal vascularity index (CVI). Objective To assess the condition of the choroid in the MC localization zone using the choroidal vascularity index. Material and methods Analysis of tomograms performed on the OCT Spectralis device (Heidelberg Engineering, Germany) in the EDI (enhanced depth imaging) mode [2], 54 patients with MC. Post-processing of tomograms for calculating CVI was performed by two researchers in the Fiji program (Fiji Is Just ImageJ, v.1.0). The calculation of the indicators was carried out according to the method proposed by Agrawal R. in 2016 both for the entire "choroidal complex" and separately for the inner layers of the choroid (Branchini L., 2013) in the MC zone. Statistical processing of the results was carried out in the IBM SPSS Statistics 26.0 program. Results Average CVI indicators were calculated for measurements by each of the researchers. To calculate the statistical difference between the measurements performed by two researchers, a paired t-test was used (see table). Conclusion In all pairs of measurements performed by two researchers, there is no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05), which makes it possible to use this method for calculating CVI to assess the state of the choroid in MC. Key words: choroidal melanoma; optical coherence tomography; choroidal vascularity index; CVI