• Anitha Varghese, Robert D Merrifield, Lindsey A Crowe, Steven A Collins, Niall G J Keenan, David N Firmin, Guang Zhong Yang, and Dudley J Pennell.
• Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Unit, Royal Brompton Hospital, London, United Kingdom.
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2006 Dec 1; 24 (6): 1401-8.

PurposeTo evaluate semiautomated analysis software for measuring the total carotid arterial wall volume (TWV) as a measure of atheroma burden.Materials And MethodsSemiautomated-software and manual analyses of TWV measured by cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) were compared in two phantom models, 10 subjects with no known carotid artery disease, and eight subjects with known carotid disease. The subjects were scanned twice for reproducibility.ResultsIn subjects with no known carotid disease, semiautomated analysis of 98% of slices showed an improved interstudy coefficient of variation (COV) compared to manual analysis of 50% of slices (4.0% vs. 6.2%, P = 0.02). The proportion of matched cross-sectional slices usable for TWV measurement was superior (99% vs. 49%, P = 0.005) and the median analysis time was shorter (31 minutes vs. 90 minutes, P < 0.001) using the semiautomated software. In subjects with known carotid disease, semiautomated (99% of slices) and manual (56% of slices) analyses had comparable interstudy COVs (4.1% vs. 3.9%, P = 0.01). However, the proportion of matched cross-sectional slices usable for TWV measurement was greater using semiautomated contouring (96% vs. 56%, P = 0.01).ConclusionCarotid CMR measurement of TWV using novel semiautomated analysis software shows good reproducibility, enables greater coverage of arterial vessel wall length, and is considerably faster compared to manual contouring.(c) 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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