Purpose To determine patient factors and eye conditions associated with artifacts in Spectralis optical coherence tomography (OCT) retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) scans. Design Retrospective cross-sectional study. Methods The prevalence of twelve artifact types were described in this review of 2313 eye scans from 1188 patients who underwent a complete eye exam with Spectralis OCT scanning during the period of September 2009 to July 2013. Generalized estimating equations model was utilized to analyze associations between increased artifact prevalence and 10 patient characteristics, which included age, sex, race, visual acuity, refractive error, astigmatism, cataract status, glaucoma staging, visual field reliability, and glaucoma diagnosis. Results A total of 1070 or 46.3% of the 2313 eye scans had at least one artifact. De-centration error was the most common artifact (27.8%), followed by posterior vitreous detachment artifacts (14.4%). Visual acuity of less than 20/40 (p<0.0001), presence of moderate to severe cataracts (p<0.0001), advanced stage of glaucoma (p<0.0001), and a diagnosis of open angle glaucoma (p=0.0003) were associated with increased prevalence of artifacts. Conclusions Clinicians should first assess scans for artifacts before making therapeutic decisions based on RNFL thickness measurements.

PurposeTo describe spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) methods for quantifying neuroretinal rim tissue in glaucoma and to compare these methods to the traditional retinal nerve fiber layer thickness diagnostic parameter.MethodsNeuroretinal rim parameters derived from three-dimensional (3D) volume scans were compared with the two-dimensional (2D) Spectralis retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) thickness scans for diagnostic capability. This study analyzed one eye per patient of 104 glaucoma patients and 58 healthy subjects. The shortest distances between the cup surface and the OCT-based disc margin were automatically calculated to determine the thickness and area of the minimum distance band (MDB) neuroretinal rim parameter. Traditional 150-μm reference surface–based rim parameters (volume, area, and thickness) were also calculated. The diagnostic capabilities of these five parameters were compared with RNFL thickness using the area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curves.ResultsThe MDB thickness had significantly higher diagnostic capability than the RNFL thickness in the nasal (0.913 vs. 0.818, P = 0.004) and temporal (0.922 vs. 0.858, P = 0.026) quadrants and the inferonasal (0.950 vs. 0.897, P = 0.011) and superonasal (0.933 vs. 0.868, P = 0.012) sectors. The MDB area and the three neuroretinal rim parameters based on the 150-μm reference surface had diagnostic capabilities similar to RNFL thickness.ConclusionsThe 3D MDB thickness had a high diagnostic capability for glaucoma and may be of significant clinical utility. It had higher diagnostic capability than the RNFL thickness in the nasal and temporal quadrants and the inferonasal and superonasal sectors.

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