Inter-Reader Reproducibility for Carotid Territory Cerebral Vascular Infarcts: A 3.0T Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Wei Yu¹, Li Dong, ¹², Lu Zhou¹, Dan Hipper², Marina Fergurson², Guangrui Liu¹, Dean Shibata², Chun Yuan², Zhaoqi Zhang¹

We determined the inter-reader reproducibility in the assessment of carotid territory brain lesions. In a carotid study, two reviewers reviewed brain images of 134 hemispheres from 67 subjects independently. The inter-reader agreement was substantial for the lesion presence (κ = 0.67; 0.54-0.80) and the lesion size (κ = 0.75; 0.60-0.92), and there was complete agreement (κ = 1.0) for age. Some disagreements on the presence or absence of lesions may be due to their location near the boundary of the carotid territory. It is important to point out small old lesions were the primary factor that reduced reproducibility.