Reproducibility of the densitometric analysis of fluorescein angiograms

Computer-aided operator-interactive densitometry was applied to assess the reproducibility or retinal-fluorescein angiograms. To achieve this, the fundus camera images of glass tubings of various diameter filled with fluorescein of varying concentrations were subjected to densitometric analysis. These studies were carried out repeatedly at 9-micrometer and 29-micrometer scanning resolutions by three observers and thus the inter- and intra-operator errors could be estimated. The scanned data were analyzed as both optical densities and intensities for some of the measurements. In both analyzing modes good linearity was obtained when the densitometric response was plotted against tubing diameter for various concentrations. To determine the reproducibility of transit time and retinal circulation time analyses, a randomly selected patient's angiogram was repeatedly analyzed by three observers and compared. From these data the inter- and intra-operator errors were also determined for successive frames and the reproducibility of the area under the dye dilution curves for both arteries and veins was computed. The overall densitometric reproducibility was found to be good; however, practical usefulness of the retinal circulation time remains to be established.