Purpose:
To compare new Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) with Stratus time-domain OCT for measuring retinal and peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients.
Methods:
One hundred eyes from 50 patients with MS (34 men and 66 women, aged 23 to 72 years) were prospective and consecutively studied. All of them underwent a ophthalmic examination including best corrected visual acuity, assessment of colour vision, visual field examination, Stratus OCT (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Inc., Dublin, Ca), three Cirrus HD-OCT (Carl Zeiss Meditec) and three Spectralis OCT (Heidelberg Engineering). All OCT devices were used to evaluate RNFL and macular thickness. Comparison of measurements were done for peripapillary quadrants and for nine macular areas defined by the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study (ETDRS). RNFL clock hour sectors values from Cirrus and Stratus were compared.The reliability of repeated measurements using Cirrus and Spectralis was determined by coefficients of variation (COV) and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC).
Results:
Mean RNFL average thicknesses were 87.1±13.4 µm, 85.99±12.3 µm and 90.4±15.4 µm using Stratus, Cirrus and Spectralis OCT, respectively. RNFL measurements did not show significant differences between the three devices.Mean total retinal thickness was 200.9±20.6 using Stratus, 263.8±31.6 µm using Cirrus and 293.5±51.9 µm using Spectralis. Retinal thickness measurements from Cirrus were approximately 61.8 µm higher than those from Stratus and 27.4 µm less than those from Spectralis. All retinal measurements showed significant differences between the three tomographies.Mean COV was 2.5±0.3% using Cirrus and 4.3±0.4% with Spectralis OCT. Mean ICC using Cirrus was 0.94 and 0.81 with Spectralis.
Conclusions:
MS patients evaluate by Stratus, Cirrus and Spectralis show differences in their macular measurements, but not at the RNFL. All measurements obtained using Cirrus and Spectralis OCT show good reproducibility.
Keywords: ganglion cells • nerve fiber layer • neuro-ophthalmology: optic nerve