One major focus of our work is to study the cellular and molecular consequences of the blood supply in the eye. Specifically, we are interested in quantifying the biomechanical changes that occur in the choroidal vasculature in healthy and diseased eyes, and how these micro-environmental cues affect the biology and pathology of the eye. To accomplish this, we perform high-resolution 3-D microscopy to generate accurate maps of the human choroidal anatomy in health and in disease which is utilized for computational fluid dynamic modeling. To study the influence of choroidal hemodynamics on ocular health, we employ a sophisticated cell culture system which is capable of reproducing the hemodynamic environment of the human eye.
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Choroidal endothelial cells aligned under shear stress
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