Repeatability and reproducibility of manual measurements to peripapillary choroidal thickness in healthy children using enhanced depth imaging OCT

Background

Current researches of choroidal structure changes primarily focus on macular choroidal thickness in adolescents and children, but there are few studies on peripapillary choroidal thickness in children with enhanced depth imaging (EDI)-OCT.In addition, the reliability of manual measurements to peripapillary choroidal thickness is an important factor for the estimation of EDI-OCT.

Objective

This study was to determine the repeatability and reproducibility of manual measurements of peripapillary choroidal thickness in children by EDI-OCT.

Methods

A reliability evaluation of diagnosis test was performed.EDI-OCT technology was used to image the peripapillary choroidal thickness in 49 children aged 7-14 years in Eye Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University from February to March 2015 under the informed consent of their custodians.An annular scanning was carried out surrounding optical disc by the same ophthalmologist with Spectralis OCT, and the peripapillary choroidal thickness was manually measured at global, temporal, superotemporal, superonasal, nasal, inferonasal and inferotemporal zones.The intraclass and interclass repeatability and reducibility of measuring values from intra-observer, inter-observer and intra-session were evaluated with intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), and Bland-Altman agreement analysis was used to assess the consistency of repeated measurements.

Results

The average age in the subjects was (9.9±1.3) years.No significant difference was found in the mean difference of reduplicative measured peripapillary choroidal thickness at each zone (all at P>0.05). The ICCs of intra-observer, inter-observer and intra-session were 0.971-0.993, 0.827-0.982 and 0.974-0.991, respectively, and the 95% limit of agreement of global peripapillary choroidal thickness were -12.4-9.7 μm, -15.2-11.6 μm and -16.3-19.1 μm, respectively.

Conclusions

The repeatability, reproducibility and consistency are favorable in manually measured values of peripapillary choroidal thickness from EDI-OCT image.EDI-OCT appears a good application in the assessment of peripapillary choroidal thickness in children.

Choroidal thickness; Tomography, optical coherence/methods; Observer variation; Reproducibility of results; Children