High field carotid vessel wall imaging: a study on reproducibility

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Cardiovascular Research
• Radiology

Background:

• The current reference standard for carotid artery vessel wall imaging and quantitative measurements involves a multi-contrast protocol with five MRI sequences.
• Assessing the reproducibility of these sequences is crucial for reliable clinical application.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the scan-rescan reproducibility of five individual MRI sequences used for carotid artery vessel wall assessment.
• To determine the intra- and inter-observer reproducibility for each of the five MRI sequences.

Main Methods:

• Twenty healthy volunteers underwent repeated 3T MRI scans of the left carotid artery vessel wall using five sequences: T1-TFE, T2-TSE, PD-TSE, T1-TSE, and 3D TOF.
• High in-plane resolution (0.46mm×0.46mm) was maintained across nine transverse imaging sections.
• Reproducibility was analyzed in three common carotid artery slices for all sequences.

Main Results:

• Scan-rescan reproducibility, assessed by intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC), was excellent across all sequences (ICC range: 0.79–0.95).
• Intra-observer reproducibility was also excellent (ICC range: 0.89–0.98).
• Inter-observer reproducibility demonstrated excellent results (ICC range: 0.84–0.96) for both lumen and vessel wall measurements.

Conclusions:

• High-field MRI enables assessment of carotid artery vessel wall and lumen area with excellent reproducibility.
• All five investigated MRI sequences exhibit robust scan-rescan, intra-observer, and inter-observer reproducibility.
• These findings validate the reliability of these sequences for quantitative carotid artery imaging.