Intra and Inter-Rater Variability in the Interpretation of White Blood Cell Scintigraphy of Hip and Knee Prostheses

Background: White blood cell (WBC) scintigraphy plays a major role in the diagnostic approach to periprosthetic infections. Although the procedure has been standardized by the publication of several guidelines, the interpretation of this technique may be susceptible to intra and inter-variability. We aimed to assess the reproducibility of interpretation between nuclear medicine physicians and by the same physician and to demonstrate that Cohen's coefficient is more unstable than Gwet's coefficient, as the latter is influenced by the prevalence rates. Methods: We enrolled 59 patients who performed a Technetium-99m WBC (^99mTc-WBC) scintigraphy for suspected hip or knee prosthesis infection. Three physicians, blinded to all patient clinical data, performed two image readings. Each WBC study was assessed both visually and semi-quantitatively according to the guidelines of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM). For semi-quantitative analysis, readers drew an irregular Region of Interest (ROI) over the suspected infectious lesion and copied it to the normal contralateral bone. The mean counts per ROI were used to calculate lesion-to-reference tissue (LR) ratios for both late and delayed images. An increase in LR over time (LRlate> LRdelayed) of more than 20% was considered indicative of infection. Agreement between readers and between readings was assessed by the first-order agreement coefficient (Gwet's AC₁). Reading time for each scan was compared between the three readers in both the first and the second reading, using the Generalized Linear Mixed Model. Results: An excellent agreement was found among all three readers: 0.90 for the first reading and 0.94 for the second reading. Both inter- and intra-variability showed values ≥0.86. Gwet's method demonstrated greater robustness than the Cohen coefficient when assessing the intra and inter-rater variability, since it is not influenced by the prevalence rate. Conclusions: These studies can contribute to improving the reliability of nuclear medicine imaging techniques and to evaluating the effectiveness of trainee preparation.