Reproducibility of the Measurement of Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer Thickness by Optical Coherence Tomography

Objective:To analyse the reproducibility of the measurement of the thickness of Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer Thickness by Fourier-Domain optical coherence tomography on primary open-angle glaucoma eyes.Methods:50 primary open-angle glaucoma patients(50 eyes) were selected in sequence from June 2009 to June 2010.They inspected by two operators through RNFL scan program respectively.Double blind,only retained the images signal strength index more than 50.Operator A got the images first,and operator B got it after 4 hours interval.Second and third days do the same operation.Recorded the thickness of average,temtporal,superior,nasal and inferior RNFL then calculated their coefficient of variation.The coefficients of variance of the measurements by two operators were compared by the statistical software SPSS13.0.Results: Operator A measured the thickness of average,temtporal,superior,nasal and inferior RNFL coefficient of variation were(2.00±1.02)%、(6.44±1.49)%、(4.34±0.79)%、(5.73±1.22)%、(2.73±0.72)%;Operator B measured the thickness of average,temtporal,superior,nasal and inferior RNFL coefficient of variation were(2.29±0.84)%、(6.23±1.17)%、(4.64±0.86)%、(6.10±0.81)%、(2.99±0.53)%,The CV of average is minimum,the CV of temtporal is maximum.Differences in operator A or B and between them were showed not statistically significant(P0.05).Conclusions: The measurement of the thickness of RNFL by Fourier-Domain optical coherence tomography represented good reproducibility in operators and between them.