Automated segmentation of intraretinal layers from spectral-domain macular OCT: reproducibility of layer thickness measurements

Abstract

Changes in intraretinal layer thickness occur in a variety of diseases such as glaucoma, macular edema and diabetes. To segment the intraretinal layers from macular spectral-domain OCT (SD-OCT) scans, we previously introduced an automated multiscale 3-D graph search method and validated its performance by computing unsigned border positioning differences when compared with human expert tracings. However, it is also important to study the reproducibility of resulting layer thickness measurements, as layer thickness is a commonly used clinical parameter. In this work, twenty eight (14 × 2) repeated macular OCT volumes were acquired from the right eyes of 14 normal subjects using two Zeiss-Cirrus SD-OCT scanners. After segmentation of 10 intraretinal layers and rigid registration of layer thickness maps from the repeated OCT scans, the thickness difference of each layer was calculated. The overall mean global and regional thickness differences of 10 intraretinal layers were 0.46 ± 0.25 μm (1.70 ± 0.72 %) and 1.16 ± 0.84 μm (4.03 ± 2.05 %), respectively. No specific local region showed a consistent thickness difference across the layers.© 2011 SPIE.