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Heidelberg upgrades Spectralis glaucoma module
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DENVER – The Glaucoma Module Premium Edition for Heidelberg Engineering’s Spectralis is pending 510 clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Murray Fingeret, OD, said here at an American Academy of Optometry-sponsored press conference.
He explained how the new technology works.
“As we evaluate the back of the eye looking for glaucoma damage, we look at the optic nerve head, the retinal nerve fiber layer and ganglion cell layer,” Fingeret said. “The Spectralis originally evaluated the nerve fiber layer and then added evaluation of the macula to watch for glaucoma damage. The new thing with this particular software was the optic nerve head evaluation.
“It’s based on two things,” he continued. “First is that one of the issues is the difficulty in determining the size of the optic nerve head. If you just try to look at it clinically, it can be difficult. When using the optical coherence tomographer to identify Bruch’s membrane opening, that sets the size of the optic disc, then from there a series of radial scans are made, then a measurement is made of minimal rim width (a new parameter) and the distance from the external limiting membrane to Bruch’s membrane.”
In addition, the nerve fiber layer is measured using three circled distances, recognizing loss in a more sensitive fashion, Fingeret said.
“Now when they provide these sectors and quadrants of thickness values,” he said, “they also give you the percentage of where these values fall within that normative range.”
The three packages – optic nerve head, retinal nerve fiber layer and ganglion cell layer – provide “a more sensitive ability to detect glaucoma loss,” Fingeret said.
Disclosure: Fingeret is on the speaker’s bureau for Heidelberg Engineering.