Reliability and reproducibility of spectral and time domain optical coherence tomography images before and after correction for patients with age-related macular degeneration

Purpose: To evaluate the reproducibility and reliability of optical coherence tomography scans obtained using the time domain (TD-OCT) Stratus TM OCT, and the Spectral Domain (SD-OCT) Spectralis TM and Cirrus TM OCT devices before and after manual correction in eyes with either Neovascular (NV-AMD) or Non-Neovascular (NNV-AMD) age-related macular degeneration. Design: Prospective observational study. Methods: Setting: University-based retina practice. Patients: Thirty-six patients (50 eyes) with NV-AMD or NNV-AMD. Procedure: OCT scans were taken simultaneously using one TD-OCT and two SD-OCT devices. Main Outcome Measures: Macular thickness measurements were assessed before and after correction of the algorithm by constructing Bland-Altman plots for agreement and calculating intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and coefficients of repeatability (COR) to evaluate intraclass repeatability. Results: Spectralis had the highest number of images needing manual correction. All machines had high ICCs, with Spectralis having the highest. Also, Bland-Altman plots indicated that there was low agreement between Cirrus™ and Stratus™, Spectralis™ and Stratus™, while there was good agreement between the Cirrus™ and Spectralis™. The CORs were lowest for Spectralis TM and similar and higher for Cirrus TM and Stratus TM. Agreement, CORs, and ICCs generally improved after manual correction, but only minimally. Conclusion: Agreement is low between devices, except between both SD-OCT machines. Manual correction tends to improve results.