Inter-method agreement in retinal blood vessels diameter analysis between Dynamic Vessel Analyzer and optical...

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology
• Medical Imaging
• Vascular Biology

Background:

• Arteriovenous ratio (AVR) is a key indicator of retinal vascular health.
• Accurate AVR measurement is crucial for diagnosing and monitoring ocular and systemic diseases.
• Non-invasive methods like SD-OCT and DVA are increasingly used for AVR assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the inter-method agreement of AVR measurements obtained via spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) and Dynamic Vessel Analyzer (DVA).
• To identify potential biases or discrepancies between these two non-invasive imaging techniques for AVR evaluation.

Main Methods:

• Healthy volunteers underwent simultaneous AVR measurements using both DVA and SD-OCT.
• AVR was calculated by two independent readers for each device.
• Inter-observer and intra-observer agreement were assessed for both methods.

Main Results:

• While both methods demonstrated good inter-observer agreement, SD-OCT showed variable intra-observer agreement.
• Mean AVR measurements were significantly higher when obtained with SD-OCT compared to DVA (p < 0.001).
• A systematic bias was detected, indicating SD-OCT tends to overestimate retinal vascular caliber.

Conclusions:

• There is no significant inter-method agreement in AVR measurements between SD-OCT and DVA due to measurement bias.
• SD-OCT may overestimate retinal vascular caliber relative to DVA.
• These findings highlight the need for careful consideration when interpreting AVR data from different non-invasive devices for clinical applications.