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Quantitative measurement of atheroma burden: reproducibility in serial studies of atherosclerotic femoral arteries

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Abstract

Objectives

This study aims to evaluate the reproducibility of measures of plaque morphology in serially acquired black-blood MRI of untreated atherosclerotic femoral arteries.

Materials and methods

MR studies was obtained from 42 timepoints, on 12 patients with known femoral artery atherosclerosis. Images with a 3D isotropic FLASH with DANTE-prepared black blood contrast (DASH) at a 3-T scanner were acquired at baseline, within 1 week, and at 1 month. Six of the patients were scanned additionally at 6 months. Inter-scan and inter-observer variations of arterial area/volume measurements were evaluated.

Results

Measurement of vessel area, lumen area, wall area and wall volume showed inter-scan intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) ranging from 0.92 to 0.97 for 3 scans, 0.91–0.97 for 4 scans, and inter-observer ICCs of 0.89–0.96. Among 3 scans, the coefficients of variance (CV) for the vessel area, lumen area, wall area and wall volume were 4.1%, 6.5%, 7.5%, and 4.4%. CVs among 4 scans ranged from 4.4% to 7.9%, and interobserver CVs ranged from 6.1% to 11.8% for the different area/volume measurements.

Conclusion

DASH MRI is useful for quantifying atherosclerotic vessel area and volume of femoral arteries with low variability among serial repeated scans and between observers.

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Funding

This study was supported by United States National Institutes of Health (Grant numbers R01HL128816-01).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Yuting Wang and Xinke Liu contribute equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology, Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No. 2006 Xiyuan Avenue, Chengdu, 611731, China

    Yuting Wang

  2. Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Yuting Wang, Xinke Liu, Henrik Haraldsson, Chengcheng Zhu, Megan Ballweber & David Saloner

  3. Department of Interventional Neuroradiology, Beijing Neurosurgical Institute and Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China

    Xinke Liu

  4. Division of Vascular and Endovascular Surgery, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Warren Gasper

  5. Department of Surgery, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Thomas Hatsukami

Authors
  1. Yuting Wang
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  2. Xinke Liu
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  4. Chengcheng Zhu
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  8. David Saloner
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Contributions

Study conception and design: DS, YW, XL, TH. Acquisition of data: HH, CZ, MB, WG. Analysis and interpretation of data: YW, XL. Drafting of manuscript: YW. Critical revision: DS.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuting Wang.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The institutional review board of the University of California San Francisco approved this prospective study (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02807779). Written consent was obtained from each patient.

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Wang, Y., Liu, X., Haraldsson, H. et al. Quantitative measurement of atheroma burden: reproducibility in serial studies of atherosclerotic femoral arteries. Magn Reson Mater Phy 33, 855–863 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-020-00843-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-020-00843-7

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