Segmentation Error Correction of the Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography Images in Peer-Reviewed Studies

To assess the percentage of published articles reporting optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) metrics regarding the report of segmentation error correction.

A comprehensive search was conducted using the PubMed database for articles on OCTA imaging published between January 1, 2015, and January 1, 2021. All original articles reporting at least one of the OCTA metrics were extracted. The article text was reviewed for the segmentation correction strategy. In addition, the number of articles that mentioned the lack of segmentation error correction as a limitation of the study was recorded.

From the initial 5288 articles, 1559 articles were included for detailed review. One hundred ninety-six articles (12.57%) used manual correction for segmentation errors. Of the remaining articles, 589 articles (37.8%) excluded images with significant segmentation errors, and 99 articles (6.3%) mentioned segmentation errors as a limitation of their study. The rest of the articles (675, 43.3%) did not address the segmentation error. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that ignorance of segmentation error was significantly associated with lower journal ranks, earlier years of publication and disease category of age-related macular degeneration, and glaucoma (all P < 0.001).

A significant proportion of peer-reviewed articles in PubMed, disregarded the segmentation error correction. The conclusions of such studies should be interpreted with caution. Editors, reviewers, and authors of OCTA articles should pay special attention to the correction of segmentation errors.