The inclusion criteria included the following: (1) aged 6–15 years, (2) best-corrected visual acuity of 20/25 or better, (3) intraocular pressure (IOP) <21 mm Hg, and (4) avoiding caffeine for 12 h prior to the study. Ninety-two patients aged 6–15 years were prospectively recruited from the Eye Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University for this study.

This study was conducted following the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the ethics committee of the Eye Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University. Written informed consent was obtained from the legal guardians of the children prior to enrollment. This study was designed to evaluate the inter-examiner and intra-examiner reliability of OCTA in healthy children.

A customized segmentation method was used to evaluate the inter-and intra-examiner reliability of OCTA in healthy children aged 6–15 years. In this study, the macular VD in the superficial, intermediate, and deep retinal capillary plexuses (SCP, ICP, and DCP, respectively) and the choriocapillaris (CC) were measured using OCTA. Many studies investigated the correlation between the mechanism of myopia progression and the parameters of OCTA ( 12, 13).Įvaluating the repeatability and reproducibility of OCTA in a pediatric sample was essential considering that children might not cooperate as effectively as adults during an examination. ( 13) found on the OCTA examination that the retinal superficial VD was lower in myopic than in emmetropic children, and the area of FAZ was larger in myopic than in emmetropic children. Some recent studies used OCTA to examine ocular diseases involving vascularization or vessel changes in children ( 11). It has been widely applied in the diagnostic and pathogenetic studies of several ocular diseases including ischemic maculopathy ( 1), age-related macular degeneration ( 2), diabetic retinopathy ( 3), myopia ( 4), Marfan syndrome ( 5), and so on.ĭuring follow-up, OCTA demonstrates high short-and long-term repeatability and reproducibility in measuring the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) and vascular density (VD) of adults with pathologic eyes ( 6– 10). Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is a noninvasive and quick imaging technique to enable the visualization of retinal microvasculature without fluorescein dye injection. The reproducibility and repeatability of the VD of three retinal capillary plexuses depended on the depth of the retinal capillary plexus. The parameters of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) also showed significant reproducibility and repeatability (COV = 0.01–0.21% ICC = 0.743–0.994).Ĭonclusion: The VD measurements of the choriocapillaris and FAZ parameters using OCTA showed excellent inter-examiner and intra-examiner reliability in school children. In the choroid, the inter-examiner reproducibility and intra-examiner repeatability of the VD measurement of choriocapillaris were excellent in the macula, fovea, parafovea, and perifovea (COV = 1.00–6.10% ICC = 0.856–0.950). For both reproducibility and repeatability, the ICC ranged from moderate to high (superficial plexus: ICC = 0.570–0.976 intermediate plexus: ICC = 0.720–0.968 deep plexus: ICC = 0.628–0.954). In the retina, the reproducibility and repeatability of VD became poorer from superficial to deep retinal capillary plexus (superficial: COV = 4.61–11.11% intermediate: COV = 7.73–14.15% deep: COV = 14.60–32.28%). Results: Ninety participants aged 6–15 years were enrolled two participants were excluded because of low-quality images.

The coefficient of variation (COV), intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), and Bland–Altman plots were used to evaluate the repeatability and reproducibility. Macular OCTA images (6 × 6 mm 2) were obtained thrice by two examiners using the RTVue-XR Avanti OCT system.

Materials and methods: Ninety-two school children were prospectively recruited. Objective: This study aimed to test the inter-examiner and intra-examiner reliability of macular vascular density (VD) measurement of retinal and choriocapillaris plexuses in healthy children using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA).

5Shanghai Research Center of Ophthalmology and Optometry, Shanghai, China.

4Key Laboratory of Myopia, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, China.

3NHC Key Laboratory of Myopia, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

2Eye Institute and Department of Ophthalmology, Eye & ENT Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

1School of Ophthalmology and Optometry and Eye Hospital, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.

Kai Diao 1 †, Xiaomin Huang 1 †, Mingyu Yao 1 †, Jiawei Li 1, Feifei Fan 1, Hongxian Pan 1, Jinjin Yu 2,3,4,5, Yizhou Yang 1, Weiwei Lu 1, Hengli Lian 1, Qinmei Wang 1 *, Jinhai Huang 2,3,4,5 * and Ruru Chen 1 *

Coherence x 3