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Updated: Jul 22, 2025
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Retinal Vascular Reactivity as Assessed by Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography
Published on: March 26, 2020
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Repeatability and Comparability of Retinal Blood Vessel Caliber Measurements by OCTA
Joby Tsai1, Samuel Asanad2, Martha Whiting2
1Department of Ophthalmology, Broward Health, Deerfield Beach, FL 33064, USA.
Vision (Basel, Switzerland)
|July 25, 2023
Summary
Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) demonstrates high repeatability in vessel caliber measurements. Macular vessel measurements showed greater variability, potentially due to technical limitations with smaller vessels.
Area of Science:
- Ophthalmology
- Medical Imaging
- Retinal Imaging
Background:
- Assessing the repeatability of vessel caliber measurements using OCTA.
- Understanding the reliability of OCTA for quantitative vascular analysis.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the consistency of vessel caliber measurements obtained through OCTA.
- To identify factors influencing measurement variability in OCTA.
Main Methods:
- Prospective study involving 28 patients (47 eyes) with sequential OCTA imaging.
- Independent masked graders performed vessel caliber measurements on optic nerve head and macular images.
- Analysis of inter-grader agreement and coefficient of variation for repeated OCTA images.
Main Results:
- Excellent inter-grader agreement (ICC 0.90) and low overall coefficient of variation (CoV = 0.10).
- Thinner vessels associated with glaucoma severity, older age, macular location, and diabetes (p < 0.05).
- Higher CoV in peripapillary region (0.07) vs. macula (0.15); ICC lower for macula (0.72).
Conclusions:
- OCTA offers high repeatability for vessel caliber measurements with low variability.
- Macular vessel measurements exhibit greater variability, possibly due to technical challenges with smaller vessels.
- OCTA is a reliable tool for quantitative vascular assessment in the retina.
