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Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a complex autoimmune disease characterized by skin and internal organ fibrosis, with vascular dysfunction playing a critical role in its pathogenesis. This study utilizes optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) to explore vascular abnormalities in SSc patients. We imaged 26 SSc patients and 17 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers. High-resolution OCTA images of the forearm, hand, finger, and nailbed skin vasculature were obtained using a swept-source OCT system, with a central wavelength of 1300 nm, a scan range of 108 nm, a scan rate of 100 kHz. Post-processing was achieved using Matlab and QuPath, where a Hessian filter-based approach was utilized to enhance blood vessel contrast and connectivity in 2D projections. These tools were also employed for vessel lumen width (VLW) calculation, with group comparisons made using Mann-Whitney U-test. The results showed a significant decrease in VLW in SSc patients compared to healthy controls across all imaged regions (p<0.001 for all locations: finger, hand, forearm, and nailbed). These findings suggest that OCTA is a valuable tool for detecting and quantifying vascular abnormalities in SSc skin, potentially offering new insights for disease management.
Никитин et al. (Wed,) studied this question.