TY - JOUR T1 - Quantitative Blood Flow Measurements in Gliomas Using Arterial Spin-Labeling at 3T: Intermodality Agreement and Inter- and Intraobserver Reproducibility Study JF - American Journal of Neuroradiology JO - Am. J. Neuroradiol. SP - 2073 LP - 2079 DO - 10.3174/ajnr.A2725 VL - 32 IS - 11 AU - T. Hirai AU - M. Kitajima AU - H. Nakamura AU - T. Okuda AU - A. Sasao AU - Y. Shigematsu AU - D. Utsunomiya AU - S. Oda AU - H. Uetani AU - M. Morioka AU - Y. Yamashita Y1 - 2011/12/01 UR - http://www.ajnr.org/content/32/11/2073.abstract N2 - BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: QUASAR is a particular application of the ASL method and facilitates the user-independent quantification of brain perfusion. The purpose of this study was to assess the intermodality agreement of TBF measurements obtained with ASL and DSC MR imaging and the inter- and intraobserver reproducibility of glioma TBF measurements acquired by ASL at 3T. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two observers independently measured TBF in 24 patients with histologically proved glioma. ASL MR imaging with QUASAR and DSC MR imaging were performed on 3T scanners. The observers placed 5 regions of interest in the solid tumor on rCBF maps derived from ASL and DSC MR images and 1 region of interest in the contralateral brain and recorded the measured values. Maximum and average sTBF values were calculated. Intermodality and intra- and interobsever agreement were determined by using 95% Bland-Altman limits of agreement and ICCs. RESULTS: The intermodality agreement for maximum sTBF was good to excellent on DSC and ASL images; ICCs ranged from 0.718 to 0.884. The 95% limits of agreement ranged from 59.2% to 65.4% of the mean. ICCs for intra- and interobserver agreement for maximum sTBF ranged from 0.843 to 0.850 and from 0.626 to 0.665, respectively. The reproducibility of maximum sTBF measurements obtained by methods was similar. CONCLUSIONS: In the evaluation of sTBF in gliomas, ASL with QUASAR at 3T yielded measurements and reproducibility similar to those of DSC perfusion MR imaging. AIFarterial input functionASLarterial spin-labelingDSCdynamic susceptibility contrast-enhancedICCintraclass correlation coefficientQUASARquantitative STAR labeling of arterial regionsQUIPPSquantitative imaging of perfusion using a single subtractionrCBFrelative cerebral blood flowrCBVrelative cerebral blood volumesTBFstandardized TBFTBFtumor blood flow ER -