The dislocation density is one of the most important structural parameters used in physical metallurgy. From various methods that have been suggested for its determination, the line intercept method evaluating the dislocation density from transmission electron micrographs of thin foils is probably that used most frequently. When the dislocation density is evaluated by the line intercept method from a micrograph of densely spaced dislocations, a certain fraction of dislocation intersections with the test lines may be missed by the observer. The resulting error can be interpreted by a limited resolution of dislocation images in counting the intersections. Our model allows the error either to be estimated or to be avoided by a choice of an appropriate magnification of the micrograph.