Advances in Retinal Imaging: Real-Time Imaging of Single Neuronal Cell Apoptosis (DARC)

Measures of disease activity in glaucoma

“…The RGCs subsequently shrink, membrane blebbing takes place, chromatin is condensed and pyknotic nuclei develop. Phosphatidylserine (PS) is believed to be one of the markers of apoptosis (Yap et al 2020b). PS is usually located in the inner leaflet and asymmetrically distributed across the cell membrane.…”

“…PS is usually located in the inner leaflet and asymmetrically distributed across the cell membrane. When the RGCs undergo apoptosis, more PS starts to appear on the outer leaflet (Figure 14) (Ahmad 2017;Yap et al 2020b). DARC is a technique that allows the identification and visualisation of apoptosing RGCs by using fluorescently labelled annexin A5 (Yap et al 2018b).…”

“…The annexin V-bound fluorophore is then excited by a laser and a photodetector system is used to detect the fluorescent light emission. A confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscope (cLSO) is required to analyse the retina (Bizrah et al 2014;Yap et al 2020b).…”