Evaluation of different Swept'Source optical coherence tomography angiography (SS-OCTA) slabs for the detection of features of diabetic retinopathy

Purpose: To compare different Swept-Source optical coherence tomography angiography (SS-OCTA) slabs for the detection of features of diabetic retinopathy (DR), to find the most suitable slab for grading.

Methods: Retrospective cross-sectional study. Consecutive patients with DR were evaluated using SS-OCTA. The central 12 × 12 mm scan was used to generate the retinal, superficial and deep slab. The grading results of the slabs were then compared to determine if one specific slab is superior to detect respective features.

Results: A total of 348 eyes (190 patients; mean age 58.1 ± 14.5 years) were graded for features of DR. The retinal slab detected most frequently MAs and IRMAs, however with no significant difference compared to the superficial slab (p = 0.93 and p = 0.93, respectively). Small capillary dropout was most frequently found on the superficial slab, but there was no significant difference compared with the retinal (p = 0.78) and deep slab (p = 0.45). The only statistically significant difference was found for large capillary dropout, where the retinal and superficial slab showed a higher detection rate compared with the deep slab (p ≤ 0.0001 and p = 0.001, respectively).

Conclusions: The superficial and retinal slabs are equally suitable for grading with no statistically significant difference in the detection rate of the diabetic features examined.