  We study the effect of the coronal background in the determination of the
diameter of EUV loops, and we analyze the suitability of the procedure followed
in a previous paper (L\'opez Fuentes, Klimchuk & D\'emoulin 2006) for
characterizing their expansion properties. For the analysis we create different
synthetic loops and we place them on real backgrounds from data obtained with
the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (\textit{TRACE}). We apply to these
loops the same procedure followed in our previous works, and we compare the
results with real loop observations. We demonstrate that the procedure allows
us to distinguish constant width loops from loops that expand appreciably with
height, as predicted by simple force-free field models. This holds even for
loops near the resolution limit. The procedure can easily determine when loops
are below resolution limit and therefore not reliably measured. We find that
small-scale variations in the measured loop width are likely due to
imperfections in the background subtraction. The greatest errors occur in
especially narrow loops and in places where the background is especially bright
relative to the loop. We stress, however, that these effects do not impact the
ability to measure large-scale variations. The result that observed loops do
not expand systematically with height is robust.
