Interobserver agreement of the visual entorhinal cortex atrophy (ERICA) score
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47456/rbps.v26isupl_3.02Keywords:
Alzheimer’s Disease, Magnetic Resonance Image, BiomarkerAbstract
Introduction: The ERICA score has been used as an assessment tool for entorhinal cortex atrophy in cranial MRI images of patients with suspected Alzheimer's Disease. Objectives: To evaluate the degree of interobserver agreement and reproducibility in the application of the ERICA score to verify the degree of entorhinal cortex atrophy. Methods: Analyses were performed by two evaluators based on MRI exams with 1.3 mm slices, using the T1 SPGR sequence without contrast, in the hippocampal region at the level of the mammillary bodies. The sample consisted of 51 patients treated at the radiology and imaging diagnosis service of Cassiano Antônio Moraes University Hospital. To measure interobserver agreement, the weighted Kappa test (linear weight) was used. Results: In the classification, scores 0 and 1 were the most common in the sample for both cerebral hemispheres. For the evaluation of agreement in the classification of entorhinal cortex atrophy, the weighted Kappa test indicated that there is moderate reliability between the two observers for both the right side (k= 0.4785; p=7.333e-05) and the left side (k= 0.5526; p=8.199e-07). Conclusion: The interpretation of Kappa should consider the specific context in which it is applied; therefore, the interpretation of MRI images for the ERICA score appears to be a viable instrument in relation to entorhinal cortex atrophy, supporting, as an imaging biomarker, the early diagnosis of AD.
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