Abstract
Purpose:
To report the reproducibility of retinal blood flow (RBF) measurements using a newly developed Doppler Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography (FD-OCT) instrument in humans.
Methods:
We measured the RBF using the FD-OCT instrument and bidirectional laser Doppler Velocimetry instrument (LDV) (Canon Laser Blood Flowmeter, Canon Co., Japan) in 6 healthy volunteers. The reproducibility of the RBF measurements was assessed by calculating the coefficients of variation (CVs) for repeated measurements (5 times) of the retinal blood velocity (V) in the temporal retinal arterioles and venules.
Results:
The measurements of the V in the temporal superior arterioles and venules were 40.0 ± 6.2 mm/second (mean ± standard deviation) and 23.5 ± 2.7 mm/second with FD-OCT and 35.5 ± 6.4 mm/second and 21.6 ± 2.5 mm/second with the bidirectional LDV apparatus, respectively. The blood velocity results obtained using the two methods did not differ significantly (arterioles, p = 0.80; venules, p = 0.23). The CVs for V were 12.1 ± 4.9% in the arterioles and 14.5 ± 6.6% in the venules with FD-OCT and 11.9 ± 5.6% in the arterioles and 11.7 ± 5.7% in the venules with the bidirectional LDV apparatus. There were no significant differences in CVs obtained by two methods (arterioles, p = 0.55; venules, p = 0.49).
Conclusions:
The current study showed that the newly developed Doppler FD-OCT enables accurate and reproducible measurements of the blood velocity in the retinal arterioles and venules in humans.
Keywords: 550 imaging/image analysis: clinical •
552 imaging methods (CT, FA, ICG, MRI, OCT, RTA, SLO, ultrasound) •
688 retina