Imaging of intraocular tumours

Abstract

Ophthalmology is a specialty that is very reliant on imaging, since the optically optimized structure of the eye lends itself easily to evaluation with photographic, optical and even ultrasound imaging. In ocular oncology, ophthalmologists have the advantage by and large over other cancer physicians of being able to visualize the tumour they are dealing with and to use imaging to record and diagnose the lesion, without always having to take a tissue biopsy. With ever improving resolution this has even led to the concept of the “optical biopsy” using the increasing resolution of optical coherence tomography. For some diagnoses, such as intraocular lymphoma, only a tissue biopsy will give a final diagnosis but in many disorders, the clinical and imaging features are sensitive predictors. In the evaluation of intraocular and ocular surface tumours, the ocular oncologist is reliant on multimodality imaging techniques, including color photography, fluorescein (FFA) and indocyanine green (ICG) angiography, optical coherence tomography (OCT), optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA), ultrasound and ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM).