Abstract:

The damage of the central nervous system in glaucoma have drawn great attention of the researchers recently.   As one of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the diffusion tensor image (DTI) technique can non-invasively and effectively trace the nerve fibers. It can also sensitively evaluate the micro-structure of brain tissues and the pathological changes of nerve fibers. It is applied into every aspect of  glaucoma research, and already led to some achievements in researches about optic nerve, lateral geniculate body, optic radiation,   brain volume and differential diagnosis of different types of glaucoma. As a new tool, the advantage of DTI includes displaying the functionality change of nerve fiber, and the disadvantage is the low resolution and susceptibility to the trend of complicated nerve fibers. At present DTI is only applied in medical research, in the future it will be widerly used in the ophthalmological field.  (Int Rev Ophthalmol,  2015,  39:     381-385)