Drusen Accumulation in Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration

This simulator models the slow, patient-specific balance between debris deposition and RPE clearance that produces drusen — the defining structural lesion of dry age-related macular degeneration. Extracellular deposits nucleate stochastically beneath the retinal pigment epithelium, grow according to a deposition-minus-clearance rate equation whose clearance term declines exponentially with simulated age, and coalesce into larger confluent deposits exactly as soft drusen do clinically. Tune the deposition rate and baseline RPE clearance capacity to see how the same biology produces very different outcomes at 55 versus 85 years old, and watch the live AREDS size classification (small / intermediate / large) and macular area coverage update as the retina ages.