There is a general consensus that elevation in intraocular pressure (IOP), due to a reduced outflow of aqueous humor, is a major factor leading to primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG). Studies indicated that the damage of the optic nervehead (ONH), due to the biomechanical environment in and around the lamina cribrosa (LC), could be an important event leading to POAG [Morgan]. Since experimentally testing tissues of such small dimensions is difficult, many researchers resorted to computationally model the biomechincal environment inside the eye [Avatar, Kobayashi, Sigal, Uchio, Xu, Tandon]. It also gives the flexibility to parametrically study and isolate the effects of individual tissues on the IOP and LC. Many of these studies involve stress analysis on a hypothetical geometry (for e.g. spherical or axisymmetric hemisphere) using a variety of constitutive models (for e.g. elastic, biphasic etc) to study the static, and dynamic response of the IOP [Tandon, Sigal].
In vivo characterization of lamina cribrosa pore morphology in primary open-angle glaucoma