Ovalness of the optic cup and disc in the normal eye.

Observations have been made of the horizontal extent of cupping of the optic nerve head in both normal and glaucomatous eyes in an attempt to determine the factors which influence cup size in the normal eye (Armaly, I967; Armaly and Sayegh, I969; Armaly, 1969a, b; Tomlinson and Phillips, I969; Jonsas, I972) and to establish differential diagnostic criteria for glaucomatous excavation (Armaly, I969c; Armaly, I970; Becker, 1970; Kirsch and Anderson, I973a). In our series (i969) cup-disc area ratio was chosen to take account of oval or other shapes. Recently the vertical elongation of the optic cup has been considered as a possible diagnostic feature of glaucomatous cupping by Kirsch and Anderson (I973a, b) and Weisman, Asseff, Phelps, Podos, and Becker (I973). It is important, however, to consider factors which influence physiological variations of any feature before it may be utilized as a diagnostic criterion ofany condition, e.g. it has been found (Tomlinson and Phillips, I 969) that the area of cup of the optic disc in normal eyes is related to axial length of the eyeball and that this in turn is related to intraocular pressure (Tomlinson and Phillips, 1970); similarly the degree of angulation and position of emergence of vessels at the optic disc are dependent on the area of physiological cupping present (Tomlinson and Phillips, 1977 ). Our present observations were made to define clearly whether a vertically oval cup tends to occur in a vertically oval disc (this may have been implicit in the investigation by Weisman and other (I973) but is not considered by Kirsch and Anderson (I973a)).