Clinical Evaluation of a Quantitative Imaging Biomarker Supporting Radiological Assessment of Hippocampal Sclerosis

Objective: To evaluate the influence of quantitative reports (QReports) on the radiological assessment of hippocampal sclerosis (HS) from MRI of patients with epilepsy in a setting mimicking clinical reality.Methods: The study included 40 patients with epilepsy, among them 20 with structural abnormalities in the mesial temporal lobe (13 with HS). Six raters blinded to the diagnosis assessed the 3T MRI in two rounds, first using MRI only and later with both MRI and the QReport. Results were evaluated using inter-rater agreement (Fleiss' kappa k) and comparison with a consensus of two radiological experts derived from clinical and imaging data, including 7T MRI.Results: For the primary outcome, diagnosis of HS, the mean accuracy of the raters improved from 77.5% with MRI only to 86.3% with the additional QReport (effect size d = 1.43). Inter-rater agreement increased from k = 0.56 to k = 0.72. Five of the six raters reached higher accuracies, and all reported higher confidence when using the QReports.Conclusion: In this pre-use clinical evaluation study, we demonstrated clinical feasibility and usefulness as well as the potential impact of a previously suggested imaging biomarker for radiological assessment of HS.