Repeatability of OCT Anterior Surface and Bowman's Layer Curvature and Aberrations in Normal and Keratoconic Eyes

To study the repeatability of anterior surface and Bowman's layer curvature in normal and keratoconic eyes using optical coherence tomography (OCT).

In this study, 96 normal and 96 keratoconic eyes underwent corneal imaging using Pentacam (Oculus Optikgeräte, Wetzlar, Germany) and OCT (Triton, Topcon Corporation, Tokyo, Japan). The elevation data from segmented air-epithelium (A-E) and epithelium-Bowman's layer (E-B) interfaces in OCT scans were used to quantify curvature and aberrations. The wavefront aberrations were evaluated with the ray tracing method and 6th order Zernike polynomials. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), within-subject standard deviation (Sw), and coefficient of variation (CoV) were used to assess repeatability.

For curvatures, the Sw was less than 0.25 diopters (D) for the normal and keratoconic eyes. The Sw was highest for root mean square of lower order aberrations (0.14 µm) in keratoconic eyes. The CoV for curvatures was well below 0.5% for both groups. For some aberrations irrespective of groups, the CoV was greater because some individual aberrations (mean of three successive measurements) tended to be smaller in magnitude and even a small Sw resulted in a high CoV. For all variables, the ICC ranged between 0.80 and 0.99 for both the OCT and Pentacam measurements. Most variables were similar between the A-E and E-B interfaces (P > .05) for both groups. However, both differed significantly from all Pentacam variables (P < .05) in normal and keratoconic eyes.

The repeatability of OCT curvatures and aberrations compared well with the Pentacam indices for normal and keratoconic eyes. [J Refract Surg. 2020;36(4):247-252.].