Barakat Nadia, Shah Pallav, Faro Scott H, Gaughan John P, Middleton Devon, Mulcahey M J, Mohamed Feroze B
Nadia Barakat, Pallav Shah, Scott H Faro, Devon Middleton, Feroze B Mohamed, Department of Radiology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19140, United States.
World J Radiol. 2015 Sep 28;7(9):279-85. doi: 10.4329/wjr.v7.i9.279.
To assess inter- and intra-rater reliability (agreement) between two region of interest (ROI) methods in pediatric spinal cord diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).
Inner-Field-of-View DTI data previously acquired from ten pediatric healthy subjects (mean age = 12.10 years) was used to assess for reliability. ROIs were drawn by two neuroradiologists on each subject data twice within a 3-mo interval. ROIs were placed on axial B0 maps along the cervical spine using free-hand and fixed-size ROIs. Agreement analyses for fractional anisotropy (FA), axial diffusivity, radial diffusivity and mean diffusivity were performed using intra-class-correlation (ICC) and Cronbach's alpha statistical methods.
Inter- and intra-rater agreement between the two ROI methods showed moderate (ICC = 0.5) to strong (ICC = 0.84). There were significant differences between raters in the number of pixels selected using free-hand ROIs (P < 0.05). However, no significant differences were observed in DTI parameter values. FA showed highest variability in ICC values (0.10-0.87). Cronbach's alpha showed moderate-high values for raters and ROI methods.
The study showed that high reproducibility in spinal cord DTI can be achieved, and demonstrated the importance of setting detailed methodology for post-processing DTI data, specifically the placement of ROIs.
评估儿科脊髓扩散张量成像（DTI）中两种感兴趣区域（ROI）方法之间的评分者间和评分者内信度（一致性）。
使用先前从10名儿科健康受试者（平均年龄 = 12.10岁）获取的视野内DTI数据来评估信度。两名神经放射科医生在3个月的间隔内对每个受试者的数据绘制ROI两次。使用徒手绘制和固定大小的ROI在沿颈椎的轴向B0图上放置ROI。使用组内相关系数（ICC）和克朗巴哈系数统计方法对分数各向异性（FA）、轴向扩散率、径向扩散率和平均扩散率进行一致性分析。
两种ROI方法之间的评分者间和评分者内一致性显示为中等（ICC = 0.5）至强（ICC = 0.84）。在使用徒手绘制ROI选择的像素数量方面，评分者之间存在显著差异（P < 0.05）。然而，在DTI参数值方面未观察到显著差异。FA在ICC值中显示出最高的变异性（0.10 - 0.87）。克朗巴哈系数显示评分者和ROI方法的值为中等偏高。
该研究表明在脊髓DTI中可以实现高再现性，并证明了为DTI数据后处理设置详细方法的重要性，特别是ROI的放置。
