Comparison of Laser Scanning Diagnostic Devices for Early Glaucoma Detection.

BACKGROUND

To compare the diagnostic accuracy and to evaluate the correlation of optic nerve head and retinal nerve fiber layer thickness values between Fourier-Domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT), confocal scanning laser ophthalmoscopy (CSLO), and scanning laser polarimetry (SLP) for early glaucoma detection.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Ninety-three patients with early open-angle glaucoma, 58 patients with ocular hypertension, and 60 healthy control subjects were included in this observational, cross-sectional study. All study participants underwent FD-OCT (RTVue-100), CSLO (HRT3), and SLP (GDx VCC) imaging of the optic nerve head and the retinal nerve fiber layer. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curves (AUROC) and Bland-Altman analysis were performed.

RESULTS

The parameters with the highest diagnostic accuracy were found for FD-OCT cup-to-disc ratio (AUROC=0.841), for SLP NFI (AUROC=0.835), and for CSLO cup-to-disc ratio (AUROC=0.789). Diagnostic accuracy of the best CSLO and SLP parameter was similar (P=0.259). There was a small statistically significant difference between the best CSLO and FD-OCT parameters for differentiating between glaucoma and healthy eyes (P=0.047).

CONCLUSIONS

FD-OCT and SLP have a similarly good diagnostic ability to distinguish between early glaucoma and healthy subjects. The diagnostic accuracy of CSLO was comparable with SLP and marginally lower compared with FD-OCT.