Diagnosis

Your doctor may diagnose your condition by reviewing your medical and family history and conducting a complete eye exam. He or she may also do several other tests, including:

• Examination of the back of your eye. Your eye doctor will put drops in your eyes to dilate them and use a special instrument to examine the back of your eye. He or she will look for a mottled appearance that's caused by drusen — yellow deposits that form under the retina. People with macular degeneration often have many drusen.
• Test for defects in the center of your vision. During an eye examination, your eye doctor may use an Amsler grid to test for defects in the center of your vision. Macular degeneration may cause some of the straight lines in the grid to look faded, broken or distorted.
• Fluorescein angiography. During this test, your doctor injects a colored dye into a vein in your arm. The dye travels to and highlights the blood vessels in your eye. A special camera takes several pictures as the dye travels through the blood vessels. The images will show if you have retinal changes or abnormal blood vessels, which are a sign of wet macular degeneration.
• Indocyanine green angiography. Like fluorescein angiography, this test uses an injected dye. It may be used alongside a fluorescein angiogram to identify specific types of macular degeneration.
• Optical coherence tomography. This noninvasive imaging test displays detailed cross-sectional images of the retina. It identifies areas of retina thinning, thickening or swelling. These can be caused by fluid accumulation from leaking blood vessels in and under your retina.