• Jin Liu, Jie Sun, Niranjan Balu, Marina S Ferguson, Jinnan Wang, William S Kerwin, Daniel S Hippe, Amy Wang, Thomas S Hatsukami, and Chun Yuan.
• Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2019 Oct 1; 50 (4): 1055-1062.

BackgroundPresence of intraplaque hemorrhage (IPH) is a known risk factor for stroke and plaque progression. Accurate and reproducible measurement of IPH volume are required for further risk stratification.PurposeTo develop a semiautomatic method to measure carotid IPH volume.Study TypeRetrospective.PopulationPatients scheduled for carotid endarterectomy and patients with 16-79% asymptomatic carotid stenosis by ultrasound.Field Strength3T.SequenceSimultaneous noncontrast angiography and intraplaque hemorrhage (SNAP) MRI.AssessmentA semiautomated volumetric measurement of IPH using signal intensity thresholding of 3D SNAP volume was implemented. Fourteen carotid endarterectomy patients were enrolled to determine the signal intensity threshold of IPH using histology. Thirty-three patients with 16-79% asymptomatic stenosis were scanned twice within 1 month to evaluate reproducibility. The normalized SNAP intensity with the highest Youden index for predicting IPH on histology was used for thresholding. Scan-rescan reproducibility of IPH measurement was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and coefficient of variation (CV).Statistical TestsReceiver operating characteristic curve, area under the curve, Cohen's kappa, intraclass correlation coefficient, coefficient of variance (CV), and paired t-test.ResultsIPH detection by the algorithm had substantial agreement with manual review (kappa: 0.92; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.83, 1.00) and moderate agreement with histology (kappa: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.34, 0.68). IPH volume measurements by the algorithm were strongly correlated with histology (Spearman's rho = 0.76, P = 0.002). IPH measurements were also reproducible, with ICCs of 0.86 (95% CI: 0.57, 0.96), 0.77 (95% CI: 0.32, 0.94), and 0.99 (95% CI: 0.93, 1.00) for maximum/mean normalized intensity and IPH volume, respectively. The corresponding CVs were 10.6%, 5.2%, and 11.8%.Data ConclusionIPH volume measurements on SNAP MRI are highly reproducible using semiautomatic measurement. Level of Evidence 2 Technical Efficacy Stage 2 J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2019;50:1055-1062.© 2019 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

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