Accuracy and precision of vessel area assessment : manual versus automatic lumen delineation based on full-width at half-maximum

Purpose: To evaluate the accuracy and precision of manual and automatic blood vessel diameter measurements, a quantitative comparison was conducted, using both phantom and clinical 3D magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) data. Since diameters are often manually measured, which likely is influenced by operator dependency, automatic lumen delineation, based on the full-width at half-maximum (FWHM), could improve these measurements. Materials and Methods: Manual and automatic diameter assessments were compared, using MRA data from a vascular phantom (geometry obtained with µCT) and clinical MRA data. The diameters were manually assessed by 15 MRA experts, using both caliper and contour tools. To translate the experimental results to clinical practice, the precision obtained using phantom data was compared to the precision obtained with clinical data. Results: A diameter error 20%), even at high resolutions, while precision for the automatic method was high (error