Automation improves repeatability of retinal oximetry measurements

• Published in: PLOS ONE
• Main Authors: Karlsson, Róbert Arnar, Ólafsdottir, Ólöf Birna, Helgadóttir, Védis, Belhadj, Soumaya, Elíasdóttir, Þórunn Scheving, Stefánsson, Einar, Harðarson, Sveinn Hákon
• Other Authors: Faculty of Medicine, Other departments, Perioperative Services, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Landspitali - The National University Hospital of Iceland
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Sjónhimna; Súrefnismælingar; Augnsjúkdómar; Náttúrufræðingar; Skurð-; svæfinga- og gjörgæsluhjúkrun; Augnlæknisfræði; Oximetry / methods; Oxygen / analysis; Retinal Vessels / chemistry; Software; Multidisciplinary; Obo; Iceland
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11815/2962; https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260120

University of Iceland Research Fund (RAK), Icelandic Research Fund (VH), Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (SB). Other authors received no funding related to this study (OBO, TSE, SHH). The funders provided support in the form of salaries for authors RAK, VH and SB, but did, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the “author contributions” section. Publisher Copyright: Copyright: © 2021 Karlsson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Purpose Retinal oximetry is a technique based on spectrophotometry where images are analyzed with software capable of calculating vessel oxygen saturation and vessel diameter. In this study, the effect of automation of measurements of retinal vessel oxygen saturation and vessel diameter is explored. Methods Until now, operators have had to choose each vessel segment to be measured explicitly. A new, automatic version of the software automatically selects the vessels once the operator defines a measurement area. Five operators analyzed image pairs from the right eye of 23 healthy subjects with semiautomated retinal oximetry analysis software, Oxymap Analyzer (v2.5.1), and an automated version (v3.0). Inter- and intra-operator variability was investigated using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between oxygen saturation measurements of vessel segments in the same area of the retina. Results For semiautomated saturation measurements, the inter-rater ICC was 0.80 for arterioles and venules. For automated saturation measurements, the inter-rater ICC was 0.97 for arterioles and 0.96 for venules. For semiautomated diameter measurements, the inter-rater ICC was 0.71 for arterioles and venules. For automated diameter ...