DEC 13, 2013
This study found that both the intra- and inter-grader reliability of the semi-automated Singapore Optic Disc Assessment (SODA) software program was excellent.
The study’s authors evaluated SODA using images from the Singapore Epidemiology of Eye Disease program, which consists of a series of population-based cross-sectional studies evaluating the prevalence of eye diseases in Malay, Indian and Chinese adults aged 40 to 80 years old living in Singapore.
The mean differences (95 percent limits of agreement) for intergrader vertical cup-to-disc ratio measurements were 0.00 (−0.12 to 0.13) and 0.03 (−0.15 to 0.09), respectively. The vertical cup-to-disc ratio agreement between the software and Wisconsin grading method was extremely close (ICC = 0.94). The mean difference of vertical cup-to-disc ratio measurement between the two methods was 0.03 (−0.09 to 0.16).
They write that these findings indicate that SODA potentially permits a cost-effective, time-efficient tool for assessing optic nerve head from digital optic disc images. The grading procedures and protocol are relatively inexpensive to implement, and the measurements require little time to perform. It takes two minutes, on average, to measure an optic disc image with SODA, which makes it significantly faster than the standard Wisconsin grading method.