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BACKGROUND: Elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) is a major risk factor for glaucoma, and accurate assessment is required for diagnosis and management. Goldmann applanation tonometry (GAT) requires corneal contact, whereas non-contact tonometry (NCT) is susceptible to ocular geometry. PURPOSE: To evaluate three-dimensional MR elastography (3D-MRE) as a non-invasive method for IOP assessment. STUDY TYPE: Prospective. SUBJECTS: Twenty-nine healthy volunteers (13 females and 16 males, median age: 33). FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE: Phase-contrast spin-echo echo planar MRE at 3.0 T. ASSESSMENT: IOP measured by GAT (IOP) and NCT (IOP) was obtained. Ocular geometry parameters (central corneal thickness [CCT], mean keratometry [Km], axial length [AL], anterior chamber depth [ACD], and lens thickness [LT]) were measured by optical biometry. The first 10 subjects underwent repeated MRE at 60, 90, and 120 Hz to assess test-retest repeatability, and 90 Hz was used in subsequent acquisitions. Three readers (S.Y., G.Z., and Z.Y., with 12, 3, and 3 years of experiences in MRE, respectively) independently assessed shear stiffness (SS) of the anterior segment and whole eye to evaluate test-retest repeatability and inter-/intra-observer agreement. STATISTICAL TESTS: Wilcoxon signed rank test; multivariable regression; intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC); Spearman's correlation; Significance level: p < 0.05. RESULTS: SS@90 Hz of the anterior segment (SS-AS@90 Hz) demonstrated excellent repeatability and inter-/intra-observer agreement (all ICC ≥ 0.889). IOP demonstrated a stronger correlation with SS-AS@90 Hz (r = 0.64) than with IOP (r = 0.59). Multivariable regression identified SS-AS@90 Hz (β = 0.53) and IOP (β = 0.40) as independent predictors of IOP, collectively explaining 58.3% of the variance. No correlation between SS-AS@90 Hz and CCT (p = 0.10), Km (p = 0.67), ACD (p = 0.90), or LT (p = 0.82) was found, while a significant correlation with AL (r = 0.02) was observed. DATA CONCLUSION: SS-AS@90 Hz was identified as a robust biomarker for predicting IOP, independent of most ocular geometric parameters. EVIDENCE LEVEL: 1. TECHNICAL EFFICACY: 1.
Department of Radiology, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China.
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