Abstract
Purpose: :
To evaluate a new instrument for determination of macular pigment density with regard to its reproducibility and examiner and system variability.
Methods: :
The study was conducted on patients with healthy eyes (27 ± 5 years; 43% male, 57% female) by three examiners on three VISUCAM 200 systems.The captured blue images were used to calculate four parameters of the macular pigment density: area, volume, maxOD and meanOD.
Results: :
Good reproducibility was observed both between the systems and between the examiners. The variation coefficients totaled between 1.71 - 3.83%.For the area, the mean standard deviation lay at 5% for both the three examiners and for the three systems, at 6% for volume, at 3% for meanOD, and at 4% (examiners) and 3% (systems) for maxOD.The results on examiner and system variability show no statistically significant differences (p > 0.05) for area, volume and meanOD.
Conclusions: :
The evaluated instrument offers a reproducible method for determining macular pigment density.The results are independent of examiner and system.
Keywords: macular pigment • imaging/image analysis: clinical • clinical (human) or epidemiologic studies: systems/equipment/techniques