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Objective:To analyze retinal vascular parameters and distribution characteristics in Chinese population via the fully automated quantitative measurement of retinal vascular morphological parameters based on artificial intelligence technology.Methods:A cross-sectional study was performed.A total of 1 842 patients without fundus diseases who visited Beijing Tongren Hospital from January 2011 to December 2021 were included.Standardized questionnaires, blood draws and ophthalmologic examinations of enrolled subjects were conducted.Color fundus photographs centered on the optic disk of one eye of patients were collected, and a deep learning-based semantic segmentation network ResNet101-Unet was used to construct a vascular segmentation model for fully automated quantitative measurement of retinal vascular parameters.The main measurement indexes included retinal vascular branching angle, vascular fractal dimension, average vascular caliber, and average vascular tortuosity.To compare different retinal parameters between sexes, the correlation between the above parameters and ocular factors such as best corrected visual acuity, intraocular pressure, and axial length, as well as systemic factors such as sex, age, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular disease was analyzed.This study adhered to the Declaration of Helsinki.The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of Beijing Tongren Hospital, Capital Medical University (No.20001220). Written informed consent was obtained from each subject.Results:The model established in this study achieved an accuracy over 0.95 for both vascular and optic disk segmentation.The vascular branching angle, vascular fractal dimension, average vascular caliber, and average vascular tortuosity were (51.023±11.623)°, 1.573(1.542, 1.592), 64.124(60.814, 69.053)μm, (0.001 062±0.000 165)°, respectively.Compared with females, males had larger vascular branching angle, smaller average vascular caliber and smaller vascular tortuosity, and the differences were statistically significant (all at P<0.05). The average vascular caliber increased by 1.142 μm in people with cardiovascular disease compared to people without cardiovascular disease ( B=1.142, P=0.029, 95% CI: 0.116-2.167). The average vascular tortuosity was positively correlated with hypertension ( B=3.053×10 -5, P=0.002, 95% CI: 1.167×10 -5-4.934×10 -5) and alcohol consumption ( B=1.036×10 -5, P=0.014, 95% CI: 0.211×10 -5-1.860×10 -5) and negatively correlated with hyperlipidemia ( B=-2.422×10 -5, P=0.015, 95% CI: -4.382×10 -5-0.462×10 -5). For each 1-mm increase in axial length, there was a decrease of 0.004 in vessel fractal dimension ( B=-0.004, P<0.001, 95% CI: -0.006--0.002), a decrease of 0.266 μm in the average vessel caliber ( B=-0.266, P=0.037, 95% CI: -0.516--0.016), and a decrease of -2.45×10 -5° in the average vessel tortuosity ( B=-2.45×10 -5, P<0.001, 95% CI: -0.313×10 -5--0.177×10 -5). For each 1.0 increase in BCVA, there was an increase of 3.992° in the vascular branch angle ( B=3.992, P=0.004, 95% CI: 1.283-6.702), an increase of 0.090 in vascular fractal dimension ( B=0.090, P<0.001, 95% CI: 0.078-0.102) and a decrease of 14.813 μm in the average vascular diameter ( B=-14.813, P<0.001, 95% CI: -16.474--13.153). Conclusions:A model for retinal vascular segmentation is successfully constructed.Retinal vessel parameters are associated with sex, age, systemic diseases, and ocular factors.
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Objective:To investigate the differential expression of microRNA (miR)-214-3p in plasma exosomes in different types of uveal melanoma (UM) and evaluate whether miR-214-3p is a potential molecular biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of UM.Methods:Twenty-five UM in situ patients who received the enucleation of eyeball were enrolled at Beijing Tongren Hospital from December 2015 to October 2019, including 10 with epithelioid cell melanoma and 10 with spindle cell melanoma as well as 5 metastatic UM patients (1 with spindle cell-like melanoma and 4 with epithelioid cell-like melanoma) and 10 healthy subjects were enrolled during the same period.Blood sample was collected from all the subjects for the isolation of plasma exosomes.The morphology of exosomes was examined under the electron microscope.The exsomal marker proteins were identified by Western blot.The expression level of miR-214-3p in plasma exosomes was detected by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR.The differential expression of miR-214-3p among different types of UM patients and healthy controls was compared.The diagnostic and classification performance of exosomal miR-214-3p was evaluated using receiver operating characteristic curve.Written informed consent was obtained from each subject prior to entering the study cohort.This study protocol was approved by an Ethics Committee of Capital Medical Univeristy (No.TRECKY2018-056).Results:The isolated exosomes were hemispherical in shape with a concavity on one side.The diameter of the exosomes was about 100 nm and the particle diameter of vesicles from samples was (82.0±2.7) nm.TSG101 protein was detectable and Calnexin protein was not found in the exosomes.The relative expression levels of plasma exosomal miR-214-3p in healthy control group, in situ UM group and metastatic UM group were 0.86(0.57, 1.49), 0.24(0.10, 0.67), and 0.43(0.23, 0.56), respectively.The miR-214-3p relative expression level in plasma exosomes of in situ UM patients and metastatic UM patients was significantly lower than that of healthy controls, and the differences were statistically significant ( Z=2.62, P<0.01; Z=2.08, P<0.05). The relative expression levels of exosomal miR-214-3p in spindle cell-like UM group and epithelioid cell-like UM group were 0.11(0.07, 0.64) and 0.46(0.14, 0.91), respectively, and no significant difference was found in the expression level of plasma exosomal miR-214-3p among different types of UM (all at P>0.05). The area under the curve of plasma exosomal miR-214-3p for UM diagnosis was 0.795. Conclusions:Plasma exosomal miR-214-3p level is significantly reduced in both in situ UM patients and metastatic UM patients.Plasma exosomal miR-214-3p is a new potential diagnostic biomarker for UM, but the exosomal miR-214-3p appears to not be able to distinguish the types of UM.