Ocular Blood Flow Measurements Research Articles

Ocular blood flow measurement by nuclide labeled microspheres.

The unique anatomical and functional properties of the eye present formidable obstacles in the development of a reliable, accurate method for measuring ocular blood flow. Recent refinements in concepts and techniques for estimating regional blood flow in other tissues have considerable potential for resolving several of these obstacles. The advent of nuclide labeled microspheres of appropriate size to impact in the vascular bed has provided a nonrecirculating indicator of fractional distribution, permitting a direct reproducible technique for ocular blood flow measurement This report describes our preliminary observations on the use of radioactive microsphere in measuring total and segmental blood flow in rabbit and monkey eyes.

MEASUREMENT OF OCULAR BLOOD FLOW AND VOLUME BY REFLECTIVE DENSITOMETRY.

The technique of reflective densitometry was brought to a high level of technical development by Rushton et al¹at Cambridge for their studies of the visual pigments. This paper shows how the technique may be used to measure the blood volume and blood flow rate in the living eye. In 1961 Broadfoot et al²applied this method to a qualitative study of choroidal blood volume changes. They demonstrated its feasibility in an elegant series of experiments. They did not, however, discuss the quantitative aspects of the technique. Reflective densitometry has been used quantitatively to determine the amounts of photopigment in the albino rabbit eye. Hagins³has made unpublished experiments which have extended this technique to estimate ocular blood flow. Applying these methods, the experiments reported here were performed and the volume and flow rate of blood in the ocular fundus of ten albino rabbits have been determined.