Inter- and intra-rater reliability of diffusion tensor imaging parameters in the normal pediatric spinal cord.

Abstract

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.