Reproducibility of Retinal and Choroidal Thickness Measurements in Enhanced Depth Imaging and High-penetration Optical Coherence Tomography

Purpose: Two optical coherence tomography (OCT) modalities can visualize the choroid: high-penetration OCT (HP-OCT) using a long wavelength, and enhanced depth imaging technique using Heidelberg OCT (EDI-OCT). The purpose of this study was to compare and investigate the agreement among the retinal/choroidal thickness parameters.

Methods: Twenty-four eyes of 12 healthy volunteers were examined simultaneously using the prototype swept-source HP-OCT and EDI-OCT. Six independent examiners measured the central retinal/choroidal thicknesses on horizontal B-scan images. The reliability was evaluated by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Intervisit reproducibility was assessed by examining 10 of the volunteers 4 months later.

Results: Using HP-OCT, the average of all measurements was 209.1 ± 12.9 μm in the retina and 292.7 ± 77.3 μm in the choroid, and using EDI-OCT, 212.5 ± 13.3 μm in the retina and 283.7 ± 84.1 μm in the choroid. An intersystem comparison showed that the ICCs were 0.661 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.535-0.754) for the retina and 0.921 (95% CI, 0.875-0.948) for the choroid. Using HP-OCT, the interexaminer ICC reproducibility values were 0.630 (95% CI, 0.447-0.791) for the retinal thickness and 0.912 (95% CI, 0.835-0.958) for the choroidal thickness; using EDI-OCT, the values for the retinal and choroidal thicknesses were 0.788 (95% CI, 0.607-0.898) and 0.970 (95% CI, 0.948-0.985), respectively. The intervisit ICC values for the retinal and choroidal thicknesses were 0.504 (95% CI, 0.376-0.609) and 0.893 (95% CI, 0.864-0.916).

Conclusions: The retinal and choroidal thicknesses were well-correlated between the instruments. Higher reliability and reproducibility are expected for the choroidal thickness measurements despite with higher morphologic interindividual variations.