Semiautomatic carotid intraplaque hemorrhage volume measurement using 3D carotid MRI.

BACKGROUND: Presence of intraplaque hemorrhage (IPH) is a known risk factor for stroke and plaque progression. Accurate and reproducible measurement of IPH volume are required for further risk stratification.

PURPOSE: To develop a semiautomatic method to measure carotid IPH volume.

STUDY TYPE: Retrospective.

POPULATION: Patients scheduled for carotid endarterectomy and patients with 16-79% asymptomatic carotid stenosis by ultrasound.

FIELD STRENGTH: 3T.

SEQUENCE: Simultaneous noncontrast angiography and intraplaque hemorrhage (SNAP) MRI.

ASSESSMENT: A semiautomated volumetric measurement of IPH using signal intensity thresholding of 3D SNAP volume was implemented. Fourteen carotid endarterectomy patients were enrolled to determine the signal intensity threshold of IPH using histology. Thirty-three patients with 16-79% asymptomatic stenosis were scanned twice within 1 month to evaluate reproducibility. The normalized SNAP intensity with the highest Youden index for predicting IPH on histology was used for thresholding. Scan-rescan reproducibility of IPH measurement was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and coefficient of variation (CV).

STATISTICAL TESTS: Receiver operating characteristic curve, area under the curve, Cohen's kappa, intraclass correlation coefficient, coefficient of variance (CV), and paired t-test.

RESULTS: IPH detection by the algorithm had substantial agreement with manual review (kappa: 0.92; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.83, 1.00) and moderate agreement with histology (kappa: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.34, 0.68). IPH volume measurements by the algorithm were strongly correlated with histology (Spearman's rho = 0.76, P = 0.002). IPH measurements were also reproducible, with ICCs of 0.86 (95% CI: 0.57, 0.96), 0.77 (95% CI: 0.32, 0.94), and 0.99 (95% CI: 0.93, 1.00) for maximum/mean normalized intensity and IPH volume, respectively. The corresponding CVs were 10.6%, 5.2%, and 11.8%.

DATA CONCLUSION: IPH volume measurements on SNAP MRI are highly reproducible using semiautomatic measurement. Level of Evidence 2 Technical Efficacy Stage 2 J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2019.