Establishment and Results of a Magnetic Resonance Quality Assurance Program for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium

Abstract

Rationale and Objectives: Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is used to assess brain tumor response to therapies and a MR quality assurance program is necessary for multicenter clinical trials employing imaging. This study was performed to determine overall variability of quantitative image metrics measured with the American College of Radiology (ACR) phantom among 11 sites participating in the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium (PBTC) Neuroimaging Center (NIC) MR quality assurance (MR QA) program.Materials and Methods-An MR QA program was implemented among 11 participating PBTC sites and quarterly evaluations of scanner performance for seven imaging metrics defined by the ACR were sought and subject to statistical evaluation over a 4.5 year period. Overall compliance with the QA program, means, standard deviations and coefficients of variation (CV) for the quantitative imaging metrics were evaluated.Results-Quantitative measures of the seven imaging metrics were generally within ACR recommended guidelines for all sites. Compliance improved as the study progressed. Inter-site variabilities as gauged by coefficients of variation (CV) for slice thickness and geometric accuracy, imaging parameters that influence size and/or positioning measurements in tumor studies, were on the order of 10 % and 1% respectively. Conclusion-Although challenging to establish, MR QA programs within the context of PBTC multi-site clinical trials when based on the ACR MR phantom program can a) indicate sites performing below acceptable image quality levels and b) establish levels of precision through instrumental variabilities that are relevant to quantitative image analyses, e.g. tumor volume changes.

Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium Multisite Assessment of Apparent Diffusion Coefficient z-Axis Variation Assessed with an Ice–Water Phantom

“…Our initial work focused on the assessment of imaging metrics using standard MR sequences and the American College of Radiology (ACR) phantom. [8] Other groups have realized the importance of quality assurance in cohort studies, as currently performed in Europe. [9] As diffusion imaging is an integral component of the majority of the PBTC multicenter trials, we sought to validate MR diffusion data from the 11 participating sites by using an ice water phantom created for this purpose[10,11] and tested for the first time in a multicenter consortium.…”

Reliability of functional magnetic resonance imaging activation during working memory in a multi-site study: Analysis from the North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study

“…Multi-site functional neuroimaging studies are being increasingly utilized to study diverse conditions such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (Colby et al, 2012), chronic (Abbott et al, 2011) and first-episode schizophrenia (White et al, 2011), pediatric brain cancer (Mulkern et al, 2008), and Alzheimer’s disease (Hua et al, 2013). However, multi-site investigations present unique challenges given that aggregating data across sites with different scanners and acquisition protocols introduces additional variability into measures of interest.…”

Correlation of 18F-FDG PET and MRI Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Histogram Metrics with Survival in Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma: A Report from the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium

“…Neuroimaging Center investigators were masked to patient outcome at the time of image evaluation. The consistency of MRI and PET data was maintained by a standard quality assurance program (16)(17)(18)(19).…”