Comparison of retinal thickness measurements and segmentation performance of four different spectral and time domain OCT devices in neovascular age-related macular degeneration

Aims: To evaluate the reliability of different optical coherence tomography (OCT) devices and scanning patterns in the assessment of retinal thickness and segmentation performance in neovascular age-related macular degeneration (nAMD). Methods: 28 eyes with nAMD and 10 healthy eyes were imaged using conventional time domain (TD) OCT as well as three spectral-domain (SD) OCT systems. Radial scans of 6 mm in size were compared between Stratus and Topcon OCT, in addition to raster scans of all three SD-OCT devices. Retinal thickness values were analysed. Results: Spectralis SD-OCT demonstrated the highest values of all OCT devices in central millimetre thickness (CMMT), and Topcon OCT raster scans showed the lowest values. Significant correlations could be found between the CMMT measurements of Cirrus and Spectralis OCT (r = 0.87). Analyses showed best segmentation for Cirrus and Spectralis SD-OCTs. Cirrus 200×200×1024 scans showed 4% and Stratus OCT 38% moderate or severe segmentation errors. Conclusion: Retinal thickness values were generally higher in SD-OCT analysis. Different performances of automatic retinal thickness analysis indicate the potential of different software algorithms to quantify retinal morphology in nAMD. Further development of current algorithms may improve quantification of retinal thickness detection in the future even further.