OCT and Parkinson’s Disease

Research in Parkinson’s disease (PD) using Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is rapidly expanding. These studies aim to better understand the pathobiology of PD and define an accessible biomarker for early diagnosis, monitoring disease severity and progression. Peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL) and macular scans in many, but not in all studies, demonstrated significant retinal thinning in PD patients and its correlation with disease severity. There is a critical need to define the best region of interest in OCT scans for PD patients. In this chapter, we describe the detailed method of OCT application and evaluation of the retinal thickness in PD. Establishing a unified method of retinal thickness analysis by OCT would be a major advance for further research studies and clinical application of OCT.