Quantification of retinal lesions in diabetic retinopathy.

A method of quantitative evaluation of the number of microaneurysms is described for clinical research in the therapy of early stages of diabetic retinopathy. In a double-blind study it can be demonstrated that the described method quantifies the progression of retinopathy statistically during only one year of observation in 32 resp. 40 patients. The difficulties of quantification are due to interpretation problems of the photographic documentation and the learning problem of the observer.