Objectives: To evaluate intraobserver and interobserver agreement of manually encompassed lung lesions for perfusion measurements using volume-perfusion computed tomography (VPCT).
Materials and methods: Institutional review board approval and informed consent were obtained. HIPAA guidelines were followed. A 65-s dynamic study was acquired with scan parameters 80 kV, 60 mAs (80 mAs for patients ≥ 70 kg), 128 × 0.6mm collimation. Blood flow (BF), blood volume (BV) and K(trans) parameters were determined by syngo volume perfusion CT body with 88 lesions analyzed retrospectively.
Results: Within-subject coefficients of variation for intraobserver agreement (range 6.59-12.82%) were superior to those for interobserver agreement (range 21.75-38.30%). Size-dependent analysis revealed lower agreements for lesions <4 cm as compared to larger lesions. Additionally, agreements of the upper, middle and lower lung zones were different.
Conclusions: Intraobserver agreement was substantial for VPCT lung cancer perfusion measurements encouraging the use for tumor characterization and therapy response monitoring. Interobserver agreement is limited and unexperienced readers should be trained before using this new method.
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