Abstract
When studying illnesses that cause disturbance in volume such as lymphedema, reliable quantification of tissue volume is important. Lymphedema results in swelling and enlargement of extremities and can be both physically and psychologically stressful to the patient. Experiments in rodent models provide a cost-effective research platform and are important for preclinical research on lymphedema. When performing such research, it can be crucial to measure the changes in tissue volume. Researchers must ensure that the risk of measurement error, when measuring the tissue volume, is as low as possible. The main goal of this article was to perform a comprehensive examination of the intra- and interrater agreement and hereby assess the risk of measurement error when using microcomputed tomography (µCT) images to measure hindlimb volume. We examined the agreement between four raters with different levels of prior experience and found that the risk of measurement error is extremely low when using this method. The main limitation of this method is that it is relatively expensive and time-consuming. The main advantages of this method are that it is easily learned and that it has a high intra- and interrater agreement, even for raters with no prior measuring experience.
Highlights
When studying illnesses that cause disturbance in volume such as lymphedema, reliable quantification of tissue volume is important
The intra- and interrater agreement results on the scans of low quality are included in the supplementary files
In this study we examined the intra- and interrater agreement when measuring hindlimb volume using μCT-scans and analysing software
Summary
When studying illnesses that cause disturbance in volume such as lymphedema, reliable quantification of tissue volume is important. Conventional measurement techniques for hindlimb volume in mice include techniques such as water displacement[11,12], paw thickness[13] or circumference measurement[14,15] These techniques are relatively cheap and easy to use, but they all have limitations. The limitations of using μCT and MRI scans to measure volume are that they are expensive and relatively time-consuming when compared to the alternative techniques When such complex and expensive techniques are being considered for use, one must ensure that the techniques yield precise measurements of the hindlimb volume and that they are without great risk of measurement bias
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