Purpose: The present computerized techniques have limits to estimate the ischemic lesion volume especially in vertebrobasilar ischemia (VBI) automatically. We investigated the ability of the RAPID AI (RAPID) software on diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) to estimate the infarct size in VBI in comparison to supratentorial ischemia (STI).
Methods: Among 123 stroke patients (39 women, 84 men, mean age 66 ± 11 years) having undergone DWI, 41 had had a VBI and 82 a STI. The infarct volume calculation by RAPID was compared to volume calculations by 2 neurologists using the ABC/2 method. For inter-reader and between-method analysis intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), area under the curve (AUC) estimations, and Bland-Altman plots were used.
Results: ICC between the two neurologists and each neurologist and RAPID were >0.946 (largest 95% CI boundaries 0.917-0.988) in the STI group, and > 0.757 (95% CI boundaries between 0.544 and 0.982) in the VBI group. In the STI group, AUC values ranged between 0.982 and 0.999 (95% CI 0.971-1) between the 2 neurologists and between 0.875 and 1 (95% CI 0.787-1) between the neurologists and RAPID; in the VBI group, they ranged between 0.925 and 0.965 (95% CI 0.801-1) between the neurologists, and between 0.788 and 0.931 (95% CI 0.663-1) between RAPID and the neurologists. Compared to the visual DWI interpretation by the neurologists, RAPID did not recognize a substantial number of infarct volumes of ≤ 2 ml.
Conclusion: The ability of the RAPID software to depict strokes in the vertebrobasilar artery system seems close to its ability in the supratentorial brain tissue. However, small lesion volumes ≤ 2 ml remain still undetected in both brain areas.
Keywords: MRI; interobserver agreement; stroke; vertebrobasilar artery system; volume measure.
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