Quantification of capillary blood cell flow using reflectance confocal microscopy

Background/purpose In vivo reflectance confocal microscopy (IVCM) is a new tool for skin microcirculation. However, the measure of quantitative blood cell flow (QBCF) has not been standardized. We studied the inter‐investigator and the intra‐capillary reproducibility of the manual measure of QBCF on IVCM videos and investigated if a software program might help measure QBCF and be sensitive to vascular occlusion tests. Methods The inter‐investigator reproducibility of the manual QBCF was evaluated on 107 videos. The intra‐capillary reproducibility of QBCF measured manually and by 2 semi‐automatic procedures based on Image J software analysis was evaluated on 19 capillaries. One of the semi‐automatic methods (peaks of luminous intensity) was also used to measure the QBCF during vascular occlusion tests. Results The manual measure did not show a good inter‐investigator reproducibility (Pearson's coefficient