title: Inter- and intra-rater reproducibility of semiautomatic determination of volume parameters in cardiac magnetic resonance imaging.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this study was to evaluate inter- and intra-rater reproducibility in volume assessment using cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMRI).
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty-five healthy volunteers and 106 patients were included into this retrospective study and received CMRI. The patients were divided in three groups (group I, 80 patients with arrhythmia; group II, 20 patients with cardiomyopathy; group III, 6 patients after correction of septum defects). Therefore, the images were semiautomatically segmented by an experienced and an unexperienced radiologists. The analysis of end-diastolic volume (EDV), end-systolic volume (ESV) and stroke volume (SV) as well as ejection fraction (EF) and myocardial mass (MM) were performed twice by an experienced and an unexperienced radiologists. The intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) were determined for the evaluation of inter- and intra-rater variance.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The intra-rater reproducibility for determination of EF, ESV, EDV and MM was excellent with ICCs ranging from 0.88 to 0.99 (all p<0.001). The inter-observer reproducibility for these parameters was also excellent with ICCs ranging from 0.91 to 0.98 (all p<0.001). The assessment of the SV showed an excellent intra-rater agreement with ICCs of 0.96 and 0.92 (both p<0.001), but only a moderate ICC for the inter-rater reproducibility (0.54, p<0.001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our study shows that assessment of cardiac volumes can be performed on CMRIs with an excellent reproducibility by both experienced and unexperienced investigators.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Innsbruck Medical University, Anichstrasse 35, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria. thomas.trieb@i-med.ac.at
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Trieb
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Glodny
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Scheiblhofer
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wolf
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Metzler
authors.forename: Otmar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Pachinger
authors.forename: Werner R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Jaschke
authors.forename: Michael F H
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Schocke
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D005260:Female; D006331:Heart Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity