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Signal features of the atherosclerotic plaque at 3.0 Tesla versus 1.5 Tesla: Impact on automatic classification

2008; Wiley; Volume: 28; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/jmri.21529

1522-2586

William Kerwin, Fei Liu, Vasily L. Yarnykh, Hunter R. Underhill, Minako Oikawa, Wei Yu, Thomas S. Hatsukami, Chun Yuan,

Acute Ischemic Stroke Management

To investigate the impact of different field strengths on determining plaque composition with an automatic classifier.We applied a previously developed automatic classifier-the morphology enhanced probabilistic plaque segmentation (MEPPS) algorithm-to images from 20 subjects scanned at both 1.5 Tesla (T) and 3T. Average areas per slice of lipid-rich core, intraplaque hemorrhage, calcification, and fibrous tissue were recorded for each subject and field strength.All measurements showed close agreement at the two field strengths, with correlation coefficients of 0.91, 0.93, 0.95, and 0.93, respectively. None of these measurements showed a statistically significant difference between field strengths in the average area per slice by a paired t-test, although calcification tended to be measured larger at 3T (P = 0.09).Automated classification results using an identical algorithm at 1.5T and 3T produced highly similar results, suggesting that with this acquisition protocol, 3T signal characteristics of the atherosclerotic plaque are sufficiently similar to 1.5T characteristics for MEPPS to provide equivalent performance.