[sandworm101]

But without actually imaging stars, how do you know that two galaxies have similar stellar densities? The OP was about low-star/high-darkmatter galaxies. I guess you would have to hope that the entire thing was rotating, and at an angle, that doppler effects could determine the size/mass.

[antognini]

That's where you have to make some assumptions given the galaxy type. As with a lot of distance techniques in astronomy, there is a lot of uncertainty. This is one of the reasons that surface brightness fluctuations are not a very popular method.