By Darin Goldman, Nadia Waheed and Jay Duker  

Reviewed by Dr Narme Deva

The Atlas of Retinal OCT: Optical Coherence Tomography by Darin Goldman et al is rather a nice little book. On first impressions, it is a little on the skinny side for an ophthalmology atlas, but it is jam-packed with lovely pictures, and they do say it is about quality, not quantity.

This OCT atlas serves as a supplement to the original text, Handbook of Retinal OCT by the same authors, but the authors claim this book can hold its own as a stand-alone reference. Overall, I think it is a great synopsis but I will admit that on several occasions, I had an urge to see what the original Handbook was like.

The breadth of this OCT atlas, however, is excellent with all the major topics covered. Each chapter has a two-paragraph summary, followed by a section on key OCT features and supplemented by several detailed OCT images. Of note, there was a particularly good summary section on artefacts in both OCT and OCT-angiography (OCTA) early on in the book. The images are fantastic. But I would have liked to have seen some more OCTA pictures within the chapters as they were scant, so not in correlation with the linear OCT images for each pathology; though I admit, OCTA is still a very new technology and evolving.

It is the depth of information, however, that I had the main issue with. If you are a novice to OCT there is insufficient information in this text book to provide you with a sound starting point so you could find yourself falling into pitfalls all too easily. But if you are an advanced OCT user, the detail is not there at all. So, the book’s target market seems to be those who are reasonably familiar with OCT and want to double check their thinking. If you really wanted to add to your knowledge base though, in my mind you are given the impression you should go out and buy the original textbook by the same authors!

There is an e-book version that comes with this OCT atlas at no additional charge, which is user friendly. The digital copy is very useful and the availability of these amazing OCT images should not be underestimated, nor the convenience of having it readily accessible from your phone or iPad.

Overall, I think this is a really nice book, but not a stand-alone reference text. Prior to writing this review, I didn’t go out and look for the Handbook of Retinal OCT, but I would consider this text to be the best advertisement for the authors’ main textbook in retinal OCT. So, this atlas falls into the category of ‘nice to have in addition to…’ but not a must-have.

About the author

Dr Narme Deva is a medical retina sub-specialist working at Eye Institute, Greenlane Clinical Centre and Retina Specialists.