Logistic regression analysis for early glaucoma diagnosis using optical coherence tomography

Purpose To determine and validate the diagnostic ability of a linear discriminant function(LDF) based on the retinal nerve fiber layer thickness at each of the 12 clockhour positions obtained using optical coherence tomography for discriminating between healthy eyes and eyes with early glaucomatous visual field loss Methods We prospectively selected 62 consecutive healthy individuals and 73 patients with open-angle glaucoma to calculate the LDF. Another independent prospective sample of 280 healthy eyes and 302 glaucomatous eyes was used to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the LDF Results The proposed function was LDF=15.584 – (12- o’clock segment thickness_0.032) – (7-o’clock segment thickness_0.041) – (3-o’clock segment thickness[nasal side]_0.121). The greatest area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was observed for our LDF in both populations: 0.962 and 0.922. Our LDF and the average thickness yielded sensitivities of 74.5% and 67.8%, respectively, at a fixed specificity of 95% Conclusion The LDF increased the diagnostic ability of the isolated retinal nerve fiber layer thickness at the 12 clock-hour positions. Compared with optical coherence tomography–provided parameters, our LDF had the highest sensitivities at 85% and 95% fixed specificities to discriminate between healthy and early glaucomatous eyes