Abstract
Background: :
Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in United States. Most cases are asymptomatic and diagnosed late. Early diagnosis and treatment help in prevention of blindness.
Purpose: :
To determine the agreement between the stereoscopic disc photographs (SDP) and the digital non–mydriatic photographs (DNP) in classifying glaucomatous optic disc changes.
Methods: :
subject 21–74 years old enrolled from the glaucoma clinic at a County Hospital in Los Angeles. Subjects had one digital non mydriatic 20 degree field optic nerve photographs taken of each eye using the Kowa nonmyd alpha–D non mydriatic fundus camera (Kowa Optimed, Inc, Torrance, CA). Following pharmacologic pupil dilation, subjects had 35 mm Stereoscopic photographs of the optic disc in each eye. We assessed the agreement between the the DNP and the SDP for the same eye as evaluated by glaucoma specialist.
Results: :
The study included 27 patients (Average age= 60± 13 years). Of the 54 eyes, 33% were glaucomatous disc change and 37% were glaucoma suspect by non mydriatic photos. Fifty nine percent (59%) of the eyes were glaucomatous disc change by the stereophotos. The overall agreement was low (Kappa=0.36±0.09). However agreement was found to be dependent on the quality of the DNP (good quality [Kappa=0.66±0.19], adequate quality [Kappa=0.37±0.14].
Conclusions: :
The study showed that good quality digital photos might be an efficient and useful method for classifying glaucomatous optic disc changes.
Keywords: optic disc • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: systems/equipment/techniques • imaging/image analysis: clinical