Assessment of the carotid artery by MRI at 3T: A study on reproducibility

✍ Scribed by Reza Alizadeh Dehnavi; Joost Doornbos; Jouke T. Tamsma; Matthias Stuber; Hein Putter; Rob J. van der Geest; Hildo J. Lamb; Albert de Roos

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 418 KB
• Volume: 25
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1053-1807
• DOI: 10.1002/jmri.20904

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Purpose

To examine the reproducibility of carotid artery dimension measurements using 3T MRI.

Materials and Methods

Ten healthy volunteers underwent three scans on two occasions for assessment of total vessel wall area (TVWA), total luminal area (TLA), and minimum (MinT) and maximum (MaxT) vessel wall thickness. A double inversion‐recovery (IR) fast gradient‐echo (FGRE) sequence was used on a commercial 3T system. During the first visit the subjects were scanned twice. The third scan was performed at least four days later. One observer traced all scans, and a second observer retraced the first scan series.

Results

For TVWA an interclass correlation (ICC) of 0.994 was calculated with all three scans taken into account. The interobserver ICC was 0.984. The agreement between the scans for TLA showed an ICC of 0.982 with an interobserver ICC of 0.998. For MinT and MaxT an ICC of 0.843 and 0.935 were calculated, with interobserver ICCs of 0.860 and 0.726, respectively.

Conclusion

With the use of a commercial 3T MR system, TVWA, TLA, and wall thickness measurements of the carotid artery can be assessed with good reproducibility. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2007;25:1035–1043. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.