Ophthalmic artery at a glance
- What it is
- A branch of the internal carotid artery supplying the eye and orbit.
- Location
- It arises from the internal carotid artery just after the cavernous part, passes through the optic canal below the optic nerve, and gives the central retinal, lacrimal, supraorbital, ethmoidal and ciliary arteries.
- Function
- It supplies the eyeball, orbital structures and part of the forehead and nose.
- Body system
- Cardiovascular · paired (left and right)
- FMA ID
- FMA49869 (Foundational Model of Anatomy)
Key facts
- Its central retinal branch is an end artery for the retina.
- It is the first major intracranial branch of the internal carotid artery.
Clinical relevance
Occlusion of the central retinal artery causes sudden painless vision loss.
Structures next to the ophthalmic artery
The nearest named structures in the 3D model, measured from the centre of each part:
- Anterior ethmoidal nerve · nervous
- Medial frontobasal artery · cardiovascular
- Frontal nerve · nervous
- Superior branch of oculomotor nerve · nervous
- Optic nerve · nervous
- Superior rectus · muscular
- Long ciliary nerve · nervous
- Communicating branch of nasociliary nerve with ciliary ganglion · nervous
- Medial rectus · muscular
- Superior oblique · muscular
References
- Foundational Model of Anatomy: Ophthalmic artery (FMA49869). EMBL-EBI Ontology Lookup Service.
- OpenStax. Anatomy and Physiology 2e, §20.1 Structure and Function of Blood Vessels. Rice University, 2022.
- Mitsuhashi N. et al. (2009). BodyParts3D: 3D structure database for anatomical concepts. Nucleic Acids Research 37, D782–D785. Data © The Database Center for Life Science, CC BY 4.0.
Related anatomy
Explore the whole body in the interactive 3D human anatomy model, or browse the A–Z list of human structures.