title: Clinical significance of B-scan averaging with SD-OCT.
abstract: Averaging multiple scans is a potential advantage of optical coherence tomography. The authors evaluate the qualitative benefits of B-scan averaging on the visualization of outer retinal structures. A retrospective analysis was performed on Cirrus OCT (Carl Zeiss Meditec, Dublin, CA) B-scans from 1 eye of 35 patients referred to the imaging unit who underwent three types of scan acquisitions: no averaging, 4× averaging, and 20× averaging. Masked assessment of quality was made using a qualitative scale of 0 (worst) to 3 according to the ability to identify structure, brightness, and continuity. Quality scores consistently improved with 4× averaging, but improved only slightly further with 20×. Averaging appeared to have a statistically significant beneficial effect for the assessment of the external limiting membrane and outer nuclear layer (P < .05), with no significant benefit for visualization of the retinal pigment epithelium and inner segment/outer segment junction. The benefits of oversampling or averaging B-scans for visualizing outer retinal substructures are apparent even when averaging relatively few frames. These findings may be helpful when designing acquisition protocols in clinical trials and clinical practice.
authors.affiliation: Doheny Image Reading Center, Doheny Eye Institute, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90033, USA.
authors.forename: Rajeev R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Pappuru
authors.forename: Cesar
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Briceno
authors.forename: Yanling
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ouyang
authors.forename: Alexander C
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Walsh
authors.forename: Srinivas R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Sadda
mesh_terms: D001485:Basement Membrane / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D012160:Retina / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D055213:Retinal Pigment Epithelium / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence / Q000379:methods*