Ametropia, retinal anatomy, and OCT abnormality patterns in glaucoma. 2. Impacts of optic nerve head parameters

Clinicians use retinal nerve fiber layer thickness (RNFLT) measured by optical coherence tomography (OCT) as an adjunct to glaucoma diagnosis. Ametropia is accompanied by changes to the optic nerve head (ONH), which may affect how OCT machines mark RNFLT measurements as abnormal. These changes in abnormality patterns may bias glaucoma diagnosis. Here, we investigate the relationship between OCT abnormality patterns and the following ONH-related and ametropia-associated parameters on 421 eyes of glaucoma patients: optic disc tilt and torsion, central retinal vessel trunk location (CRVTL), and nasal and temporal retinal curvature adjacent to ONH, quantified as nasal/temporal slopes of the inner limiting membrane. We applied multivariate logistic regression with abnormality marks as regressands to 40,401 locations of the peripapillary region and generated spatial maps of locations of false positive/negative abnormality marks independent of glaucoma severity. Effects of torsion and temporal slope were negligible. The effect of tilt could be explained by covariation with ametropia. For CRVTL/nasal slope, abnormality pattern shifts at 7.2%/23.5% of the peripapillary region were detected, respectively, independent of glaucoma severity and ametropia. Therefore, CRVTL and nasal curvature should be included in OCT RNFLT norms. Our spatial location maps may aid clinicians to improve diagnostic accuracy.