Enhanced Objective Detection of Retinal Nerve Fiber Bundle Defects in Glaucoma With a Novel Method for En Face OCT Slab Image Construction and Analysis

• DOI: 10.1167/tvst.10.12.1
• Publication Date: 2021-10-04T23:23:09Z
• Authors: Riccardo Cheloni; Simon D. Dewsbery; Jonathan Denniss
• Keywords: Retinal Ganglion Cells; 571; Optical coherence tomography; Glaucoma; Reflectance; En face; Article; 03 medical and health sciences; Retinal nerve fiber layer; Nerve Fibers; 0302 clinical medicine; Retinal Diseases; Humans; Tomography, Optical Coherence

To introduce and evaluate the performance in detecting glaucomatous abnormalities of a novel method for extracting en face slab images (SMAS), which considers varying individual anatomy configuration retinal nerve fiber bundles.Dense central spectral domain optical coherence tomography scans were acquired 16 participants with glaucoma 19 age-similar controls. Slab generated by averaging reflectivity over different depths below inner limiting membrane according to several methods. SMAS considered multiple µm thick slabs from 8 116 membrane, whereas 5 alternative methods single summary various thicknesses depths. Superpixels eyes abnormal if first percentile distributions fitted control data each method. The ability detect defects was measured proportion superpixels. Proportion superpixels controls used as surrogate false-positive rate. effects on measures evaluated linear mixed models.The varied between methods, χ2(5) = 120.9, P < 0.0001, showing 0.05 0.09 greater than alternatives (all 0.0001). No found controls.SMAS outperformed glaucoma. evaluates all potential bundle presence combining slabs, resulting detection reflectance no increase false positives.SMAS may be objectively images.