Comparison of the measurements of a novel optical biometry: Nidek AL-Scan with Sirius and a ultrasound biometry

To investigate the accuracy of the measurements of Nidek AL-Scan by comparing with Sirius (CSO, Florence, Italy), a corneal tomography which also employs the Scheimpflug principle, and a commonly used device, ultrasound biometry (UB) (Aviso A/B, Quantel Medical, MT, USA). Right eyes of 85 healthy volunteers (58 women 27 men) with a mean age of 39.24 ± 14.37 years (range 15–68) were enrolled into this comparative prospective study. Average K 2.4, average K 3.3, CCT (central corneal thickness), WTW (white to white distance), ACD (anterior chamber depth) and AL (axial length) were obtained from the AL-Scan and compared with average SimK, CCT, WTW (horizontal anterior chamber diameter) and ACD obtained from Sirius and also compared with ACD and AL obtained from UB. The statistically significant difference was found between all of the measurements (p < 0.001) except the average keratometry values (K2.4, K3.3, SimK) (p = 0.083). There was a perfect correlation between keratometry, CCT and AL measurements of the devices (ICC = 0.977, 0.954, 0.923, respectively) and there was a strong correlation between the WTW measurements of AL-Scan and Sirius (ICC = 0.865). While ACD parameter of AL-Scan and UB showed a perfect correlation (ICC = 0.977), there was a moderate correlation between AL-Scan and Sirius and also between UB and Sirius (ICC = 0.608 and 0.664, respectively). There was a high correlation between the all measurements, besides ACD, of AL-Scan and Sirius and they can be used interchangeably for average keratometry and WTW confidently. However, ACD and CCT have a broader 95 % LoA (−0.039 to 0.744 and −24.985 to 3.691, respectively). In addition, AL-Scan and UB were in good agreement regarding ACD, while differences in AL measurements of UB and AL-Scan were clinically important (95 % LoA = −0.091 to 0.703). Furthermore, UB and Sirius have a moderate agreement regarding ACD (95 % LoA = −0.047 to 0.680).