Objective: To evaluate the diagnostic value of optical coherence tomography
angiography (OCTA) in detecting the choroidal neovascularization (CNV) in agerelated
macular degeneration (AMD).
Methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis was performed by searching Pubmed,
Science Direct, Embase and Web of Science. The pooled sensitivity and specificity with
95% confidence intervals (CIs), area under the summary receiver operator characteristic
curve (sROC), and the total accurate classification rate were used to evaluate OCTA’
diagnostic value of CNV in AMD patients.
Results: Seven studies involving 517 eyes were included in the analysis. The mean age
of subjects in each study ranged from 58.5 years to 81.7 years. Fluorescein angiography
was applied as the gold standard in five studies. There were 350 eyes diagnosed with
CNV, OCTA detected 301 eyes correctly, while among the 167 eyes without CNV,
OCTA identified 150 correctly. The total accurate classification rate was 87.23%. The
Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was 0.5, indicating that there was no significant
threshold effect in the current study (S=8, p=0.103). The pooled sensitivity and pooled
specificity were 0.89 (95%CI: 0.82,0.94) and 0.96 (95%CI: 0.85,1.00) respectively. The
area under sROC was up to 0.911.
Conclusion: The specificity of OCTA for the detection of CNV in AMD patients is
extremely high, however, the sensitivity still needs to be improved. In general, the metaanalysis
revealed that OCTA had a high diagnostic value for the detection of CNV in
AMD patients.
Optical coherence tomography angiography findings of choroidal neovascularization in pseudoxanthoma elasticum
