Evaluation of Reproducibility of Measurements of Peripapillary Blood Flow with Laser Speckle Flowgraphy in Healthy and POAG Subjects.

Background: Peripapillary blood flow is of diagnostic value in glaucoma.

Material and methods: We investigated the reproducibility of peripapillary blood flow measurements in healthy individuals and in open-angle glaucoma (OAG) patients with the Nidek laser speckle flowgraphy (LSFG)-NAVI system. Blood flow was calculated as the mean of vascular area (MV), mean of tissue area (MT), and mean of overall flow (MA). Intra-rater, inter-session, and inter-rater reproducibility were assessed by determining the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and coefficient of variance (COV).

Results: There were 28 healthy subjects and 16 patients with OAG who participated in this prospective single-center trial. ICC and COV of intra-rater reproducibility were assessed in MV as 0.901; 6.424, MT as 0.909; 4.025, and MA as 0.965; 4.168. Inter-session reproducibility yielded ICC and COV values of MV (0.834; 9.223), MT (0.904; 6.215), MA (0.909; 7.069). Inter-rater reproducibility was computed for MV as 0.78; 9.758, MT as 0.890; 7.210, and MA as 0.888; 6.942. There was a significant difference in MA (p = 0.0184) between the healthy individuals (mean 36.299) and the OAG group (mean 24.944), which was not observed for MV (p = 0.0735) or MT (p = 0.1351).

Conclusion: High reproducibility of measurements of peripapillary blood flow with the LSFG system was demonstrated in both groups. There is a difference in peripapillary blood flow between healthy controls and OAG patients.