Automated Entire Thrombus Density Measurements for Robust and Comprehensive Thrombus Characterization in Patients with Acute Ischemic Stroke

MR CLEAN Investigators, Robert Jan van Oostenbrugge, Wim van Zwam

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

In acute ischemic stroke (AIS) management, CT-based thrombus density has been associated with treatment success. However, currently used thrombus measurements are prone to inter-observer variability and oversimplify the heterogeneous thrombus composition. Our aim was first to introduce an automated method to assess the entire thrombus density and then to compare the measured entire thrombus density with respect to current standard manual measurements.In 135 AIS patients, the density distribution of the entire thrombus was determined. Density distributions were described using medians, interquartile ranges (IQR), kurtosis, and skewedness. Differences between the median of entire thrombus measurements and commonly applied manual measurements using 3 regions of interest were determined using linear regression.Density distributions varied considerably with medians ranging from 20.0 to 62.8 HU and IQRs ranging from 9.3 to 55.8 HU. The average median of the thrombus density distributions (43.5 ? 10.2 HU) was lower than the manual assessment (49.6 ? 8.0 HU) (p
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0145641
JournalPLOS ONE
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 14 Jan 2016

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