A program to analyse optical coherence tomography images of the ciliary muscle.

PURPOSE: To describe and validate bespoke software designed to extract morphometric data from ciliary muscle Visante Anterior Segment Optical Coherence Tomography (AS-OCT) images.

METHOD: Initially, to ensure the software was capable of appropriately applying tiered refractive index corrections and accurately measuring orthogonal and oblique parameters, 5 sets of custom-made rigid gas-permeable lenses aligned to simulate the sclera and ciliary muscle were imaged by the Visante AS-OCT and were analysed by the software. Human temporal ciliary muscle data from 50 participants extracted via the internal Visante AS-OCT caliper method and the software were compared. The repeatability of the software was also investigated by imaging the temporal ciliary muscle of 10 participants on 2 occasions.

RESULTS

The mean difference between the software and the absolute thickness measurements of the rigid gas-permeable lenses were not statistically significantly different from 0 (t=-1.458, p=0.151). Good correspondence was observed between human ciliary muscle measurements obtained by the software and the internal Visante AS-OCT calipers (maximum thickness t=-0.864, p=0.392, total length t=0.860, p=0.394). The software extracted highly repeatable ciliary muscle measurements (variability ≤6% of mean value).

CONCLUSION

The bespoke software is capable of extracting accurate and repeatable ciliary muscle measurements and is suitable for analysing large data sets.