Computed tomography perfusion software pipelines to assess parameter maps and ischemic volumes: A comparative study

This study was dedicated to investigating the agreement of the calculated results of two CT perfusion (CTP) postprocessing software packages, including parameter maps and ischemic volume, focusing on the infarct core volume (ICV) and penumbra volume (PV).

A retrospective collection of 235 patients with acute ischemic stroke who underwent CTP examination were enrolled. All images had been analyzed with two software pipelines, RAPID CTP and AccuCTP, and the comparative analysis was based on ICV and PV results calculated by both software packages. The agreement of parameter maps was evaluated by root mean square error and Bland-Altman analysis. The ICV and PV agreement was evaluated by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Bland-Altman analysis. The accuracy of ICV and PV based on multiple thresholds was also analyzed.

The ICV and PV of AccuCTP and RAPID CTP show excellent agreement. The relative differences of the parameter maps were all within 10% and the Bland-Altman analysis also showed a strong agreement. From ordinary least squares fitting results, both ICV and PV had a remarkably high goodness of fit (ICV, R² = 0.975 [p<.001]; PV, R² = 0.964 [p<.001]). For the ICC analysis, both had high ICC scores (ICV ICC 0.984, 95% CI [confidence interval] 0.973-0.989; PV ICC 0.955, 95% CI 0.947-0.964). Furthermore, multi-threshold analysis on the basis of ICV and PV also achieved reliable analytical accuracy.

The image analysis results of AccuCTP are in excellent agreement with RAPID CTP and can be used as an alternative analysis tool to RAPID CTP software in stroke clinical practice.