Results are reported for a statistical analysis of a sample of low-surface-brightness (LSB) objects consisting of the Nilson (1973) dwarf galaxies and the DDO dwarf galaxies detected by Fisher and Tully (1975). It is concluded that: (1) the Nilson catalog is fairly complete for all galaxies with a Nilson blue diameter larger than 1 arcmin; (2) LSB objects include a broad continuum of galaxies ranging from 'true' dwarfs (absolute photographic magnitude at least -16) to more luminous (absolute photographic magnitude less than -16) but very LSB systems; (3) in general, the LSB galaxies have larger hydrogen mass/photographic luminosity ratios and hydrogen/total mass ratios than late-type galaxies of comparable luminosity, implying that only a small fraction of the total gas has been converted into stars; and (4) the LSB galaxies have a total mass/linear radius ratio 3 to 9 times smaller than that of Sdm-Sm galaxies, which may be too small for the LSB galaxies to maintain a density wave necessary for efficient star formation.
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Thuan et al. (1979) studied this question.