Paper from the Chung Lab on Retinal Vasculature in Amblyopia

A new paper from the Chung lab, “Altered retinal vasculature in amblyopia,” by Rijul S. Soans and Susana T. L. Chung, has been published in the special issue on Advances in Amblyopia Research in Vision Research. The authors examined whether retinal blood vessel structure differs in adults with amblyopia compared to individuals with normal vision. Using OCT fundus imaging and a deep-learning–based vessel segmentation approach (Spatial Attention-UNet), they quantified key features of retinal vasculature. The results showed reduced vascular richness and density in both amblyopic and fellow eyes compared to control eyes, suggesting that amblyopia may involve retinal alterations in addition to cortical changes.

Amblyopia (“lazy eye”) has long been thought to be a brain-based condition, with the retina itself considered structurally normal. We revisit this traditional view. By analyzing retinal images using advanced imaging and artificial intelligence tools, we found that the network of blood vessels in the retina is less dense in people with amblyopia - even in the fellow eye that sees better. This suggests that amblyopia may involve subtle changes in the retina itself, not just the brain. Understanding these retinal differences could help researchers better understand the biological basis of amblyopia and may eventually support the development of new diagnostic markers or treatment strategies.