Assessment of the carotid artery by MRI at 3T: a study on reproducibility.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the reproducibility of carotid artery dimension measurements using 3T MRI.


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.


CONCLUSIONS
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.
Alizadeh Dehnavi
Reza
R
Vascular Medicine, Department of General Internal Medicine and Endocrinology, Leiden University Medical Center, 2300 RC Leiden, The Netherlands. R.Alizadehdehnavi@lumc.nl
Doornbos
Joost
J
Tamsma
Jouke T
JT
Stuber
Matthias
M
Putter
Hein
H
van der Geest
Rob J
RJ
Lamb
Hildo J
HJ
de Roos
Albert
A
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002339:Carotid Arteries / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results