Inter-device agreement of retinal nerve fiber layer thickness measurements using spectral domain cirrus HD OCT

To assess the inter-device agreement of peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness measurements by 2 spectral domain Cirrus HD optical coherence tomography (OCT) devices in healthy Korean subjects.

Eleven eyes of 11 healthy volunteers were enrolled in the present study. Each eye was scanned with the Optic Disc Cube 200 × 200 scan of 2 Cirrus HD OCT devices for peripapillary RNFL thickness calculation. The inter-device agreements of the 2 Cirrus HD OCTs for average, quadrant, and clock-hour RNFL thickness values were determined with Wilcoxon signed rank test, Friedman test, Cronbach's alpha (α), intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), coefficient of variation (COV), and Bland-Altman plot.

The mean age of the participants was 25.82 ± 3.28 years and all had a 0.00 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution of best-corrected visual acuity. The signal strengths of scans from the 2 Cirrus HD OCT were not significantly different (p = 0.317). The inter-device agreement of average RNFL thickness was excellent (α, 0.940; ICC, 0.945; COV, 2.45 ± 1.52%). However, the agreement of nasal quadrant RNFL thickness was not very good (α, 0.715; ICC, 0.716; COV, 5.72 ± 4.64%). Additionally, on the Bland-Atman plot, the extent of agreement of the 2 Cirrus HD OCTs for RNFL thickness was variable according to scanned sectors.

The inter-device agreement of 2 spectral domain Cirrus HD OCT devices for peripapillary RNFL thickness measurements was generally excellent but variable according to the scanned area. Thus, physicians should consider this fact before judging a change of RNFL thicknesses if they were measured by different OCT devices.