{"doi":"10.1002/jmri.29308","title":"Automated Quality Evaluation Index for Arterial Spin Labeling Derived Cerebral Blood Flow Maps","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Arterial spin labeling (ASL) derived cerebral blood flow (CBF) maps are prone to artifacts and noise that can degrade image quality. PURPOSE: To develop an automated and objective quality evaluation index (QEI) for ASL CBF maps. STUDY TYPE: Retrospective. POPULATION: Data from N = 221 adults, including patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease, and traumatic brain injury. FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE: Pulsed or pseudocontinuous ASL acquired at 3 T using non-background suppressed 2D gradient-echo echoplanar imaging or background suppressed 3D spiral spin-echo readouts. ASSESSMENT: The QEI was developed using N = 101 2D CBF maps rated as unacceptable, poor, average, or excellent by two neuroradiologists and validated by 1) leave-one-out cross validation, 2) assessing if CBF reproducibility in N = 53 cognitively normal adults correlates inversely with QEI, 3) if iterative discarding of low QEI data improves the Cohen's d effect size for CBF differences between preclinical AD (N = 27) and controls (N = 53), 4) comparing the QEI with manual ratings for N = 50 3D CBF maps, and 5) comparing the QEI with another automated quality metric. STATISTICAL TESTS: Inter-rater reliability and manual vs. automated QEI were quantified using Pearson's correlation. P < 0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: The correlation between QEI and manual ratings (R = 0.83, CI: 0.76-0.88) was similar (P = 0.56) to inter-rater correlation (R = 0.81, CI: 0.73-0.87) for the 2D data. CBF reproducibility correlated negatively (R = -0.74, CI: -0.84 to -0.59) with QEI. The effect size comparing patients and controls improved (R = 0.72, CI: 0.59-0.82) as low QEI data was discarded iteratively. The correlation between QEI and manual ratings (R = 0.86, CI: 0.77-0.92) of 3D ASL was similar (P = 0.09) to inter-rater correlation (R = 0.78, CI: 0.64-0.87). The QEI correlated (R = 0.87, CI: 0.77-0.92) significantly better with manual ratings than did an existing approach (R = 0.54, CI: 0.30-0.72). DATA CONCLUSION: Automated QEI performed similarly to manual ratings and can provide scalable ASL quality control. EVIDENCE LEVEL: 2 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 1.","journal":"Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging","year":2024,"id":432004,"datarank":0.5334573281570459,"base_score":2.772588722239781,"endowment":2.772588722239781,"self_citation_contribution":0.41588830833596724,"citation_network_contribution":0.11756901982107873,"self_endowment_contribution":0.41588830833596724,"citer_contribution":0.11756901982107873,"corpus_percentile":63.611046646553724,"corpus_rank":4705,"citation_count":15,"citer_count":10,"citers_with_citation_signal":7,"citers_with_endowment":7,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":true,"is_dataset_confidence":0.764,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":290832,"name":"Ze Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-8339-5567","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":286341,"name":"Ronald L. Wolf","orcid":"0000-0003-1887-3697","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1236588,"name":"Ali Nabavizadeh","orcid":"0000-0002-1611-5078","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":259728,"name":"Long Xie","orcid":"0000-0002-7184-7028","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":301454,"name":"Duygu Tosun","orcid":"0000-0001-8644-7724","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":230030,"name":"Ilya M. Nasrallah","orcid":"0000-0003-2346-7562","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":230045,"name":"David A. Wolk","orcid":"0000-0002-3554-3481","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":301392,"name":"John A. Detre","orcid":"0000-0002-8115-6343","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":300139,"name":"for the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":647824,"name":"Sudipto Dolui","orcid":"0000-0002-9035-3795","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":39,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:59:35.267142Z","pmid":"38400805","pmcid":"PMC11343916","fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}