Influence of clinically invisible, but optical coherence tomography detected, optic disc margin anatomy on neuroretinal rim evaluation.

PURPOSE: We previously demonstrated that most eyes have regionally variable extensions of Bruch's membrane (BM) inside the clinically identified disc margin (DM) that are clinically and photographically invisible. We studied the impact of these findings on DM- and BM opening (BMO)-derived neuroretinal rim parameters.
METHODS: Disc stereo-photography and spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT, 24 radial B-scans centered on the optic nerve head) were performed on 30 glaucoma patients and 10 age-matched controls. Photographs were colocalized to SD-OCT data such that the DM and BMO could be visualized in each B-scan. Three parameters were computed: (1) DM-horizontal rim width (HRW), the distance between the DM and internal limiting membrane (ILM) along the DM reference plane; (2) BMO-HRW, the distance between BMO and ILM along the BMO reference plane; and (3) BMO-minimum rim width (MRW), the minimum distance between BMO and ILM. Rank-order correlations of sectors ranked by rim width and spatial concordance measured as angular distances between equivalently ranked sectors were derived.
RESULTS: The average DM position was external to BMO in all quadrants, except inferotemporally. There were significant sectoral differences among all three rim parameters. DM-HRW and BMO-HRW sector ranks were better correlated (median ρ = 0.84) than DM-HRW and BMO-MRW (median ρ = 0.55), or BMO-HRW and BMO-MRW (median ρ = 0.60) ranks. Sectors with the narrowest BMO-MRW were infrequently the same as those with the narrowest DM-HRW or BMO-HRW.
CONCLUSIONS: BMO-MRW quantifies the neuroretinal rim from a true anatomical outer border and accounts for its variable trajectory at the point of measurement.