Reliability of measuring lesion volumes in transient ischemic attack and minor stroke.
OBJECTIVE
Lesion volume measurements in disabling ischemic stroke have excellent reliability, but it is not clear whether this is also true for small lesions. We assessed the reliability of measuring baseline and follow-up lesion volumes in transient ischemic attack and minor stroke.


METHODS
Patients who presented with a transient ischemic attack or minor stroke (NIHSS < or = 3) who had brain MRI within 24 hours from symptom onset and at 30-day follow-up and had an acute lesion on baseline MRI were included. Using semiautomated software, 4 stroke fellows independently assessed ischemic lesions twice on acute diffusion-weighted imaging and follow-up fluid-attenuated inversion recovery.


RESULTS
Eighty patients were included, with a median baseline NIHSS of 1. Mean baseline diffusion-weighted imaging lesion volume was 3.4+/-7.4 mL (87.5% had <5 mL). There was excellent inter-rater/intrarater reliability, with intraclass correlation coefficients of 0.94/0.96 for acute diffusion-weighted imaging, 0.74/0.92 for follow-up fluid-attenuated inversion recovery, and 0.81/0.93 for growth.


CONCLUSIONS
We found excellent concordance between and within raters for acute diffusion-weighted imaging and 30-day follow-up fluid-attenuated inversion recovery lesion volume measurements in patients with transient ischemic attack and minor stroke.
Nikolai
N
Steffenhagen
Cynthia R
CR
Campos
Alexandre Y
AY
Poppe
Firosh
F
Khan
Jayme C
JC
Kosior
Andrew M
AM
Demchuk
Michael D
MD
Hill
Shelagh B
SB
Coutts
D000368:Aged; D038524:Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D006801:Humans; D002546:Ischemic Attack, Transient / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software; D020521:Stroke / Q000473:pathology*