Assessment of the Carotid Bodies in Magnetic Resonance-A Head-to-Head Comparison with Computed Tomography

Lukasz Budynko; Tomasz K Nowicki; Mariusz F Kaszubowski; Dominik Swieton; Maciej Piskunowicz

doi:10.3390/diagnostics13050993

Assessment of the Carotid Bodies in Magnetic Resonance-A Head-to-Head Comparison with Computed Tomography

Diagnostics (Basel). 2023 Mar 5;13(5):993. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics13050993.

Authors

Lukasz Budynko¹, Tomasz K Nowicki², Mariusz F Kaszubowski³, Dominik Swieton², Maciej Piskunowicz¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Radiology, Faculty of Medicine, Medical University of Gdansk, Smoluchowskiego 17, 80-214 Gdansk, Poland.
² 2nd Department of Radiology, Faculty of Health Sciences with the Institute of Maritime and Tropical Medicine, Medical University of Gdansk, Smoluchowskiego 17, 80-214 Gdansk, Poland.
³ Department of Statistics and Econometrics, Faculty of Management and Economics, Gdansk University of Technology, Traugutta 79, 80-233 Gdansk, Poland.

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate carotid body visibility in contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) studies and to compare the results to contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT).

Methods: Two observers separately evaluated MR and CT examinations of 58 patients. MR scans were acquired with contrast-enhanced isometric T1-weighted water-only Dixon sequence. CT examinations were performed 90 s after contrast agent administration. Carotid bodies' dimensions were noted and their volumes calculated. To quantify the agreement between both methods, Bland-Altman plots were computed. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and its localization-oriented variant (LROC) curves were plotted.

Results: Of the 116 expected carotid bodies, 105 were found on CT and 103 on MR at least by a single observer. Significantly more findings were concordant in CT (92.2%) than in MR (83.6%). The mean carotid body volume was smaller in CT (19.4 mm³) than in MR (20.8 mm³). The inter-observer agreement on volumes was moderately good (ICC (2,k) 0.42, p < 0.001), but with significant systematic error. The diagnostic performance of the MR method added up to 88.4% of the ROC's area under the curve and 78.0% in the LROC algorithm.

Conclusions: Carotid bodies can be visualized on contrast-enhanced MR with good accuracy and inter-observer agreement. Carotid bodies assessed on MR had similar morphology as described in anatomical studies.

Keywords: Dixon sequence; carotid body; computed tomography; magnetic resonance imaging.

Grants and funding

This research received no external funding.