The limbus located between the cornea and the conjunctiva tissue, is important for not only providing a barrier frontier to prevent conjunctival tissue invasion into the cornea, containing nerves passing to the cornea, having blood and lymph vasculature for oxygen and nutrient delivery, but also the niche environment of limbal stem cells. So far, in vivo image systems are not able to visualize or identify the limbal stem cells directly. One alternative practical is to visualize the histological morphology of palisades of Vogt (POV), and to speculate the possible status of the stem cells accordingly. Slit-lamp biomicroscope can be used routinely for clinical examination of the limbal morphology. However, this technology does not allow for high resolution imaging of structural details and only up to 20% of patients can be identified. In vivo confocal microscopy has been used to visualize the POV and can provide cellular level resolution images, but the technique is limited by high magnification that restricts the area of the scan, and requires contact with the eye. Besides, both slit lamp biomicroscopy and in vivo confocal microscopy have the limitation of not being able to give an overall view of the dimension and structure of the whole palisades region. Anterior segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) is a noninvasive, rapid and reproducible technique to evaluate the anterior segment and can also provide in vivo spatial information. The purpose of the study is to assess the role of aging and regions on the limbus.
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thickness of limbus
Timeframe: 1 day of inclusion