Can the degree of renal artery stenosis be quantified automatically?

The objective of the reported study is to validate a computer system, QUASA R, dedicated to the quantification of renal artery stenoses. This system es timates automatically the reference diameter and calculates the minimum dia meter to compute a degree of stenosis. A hundred and eighty images of atheromatous stenoses between 10% and 80% we re collected from two French independent protocols. For the 49 images of th e EMMA protocol, the results from QUASAR were compared with the visual esti mation of an initial investigator and with the results from a reference met hod based on a panel of fixe experienced experts. For the 131 images of the ASTARTE protocol, the results from QUASAR were compared with those from a semi-automatic quantification system and with those from a system based on densitometric analysis. The present work validates QUASAR in a population o f narrow atheromatous stenoses (> 50%). In the context of the EMMA protocol , QUASAR is not significantly different from the mean of the fixe experts. It is unbiaised and more precise than the estimation of a single investigat or. In the context of the ASTARTE protocol, there is no significant difference between the three methods for the stenoses higher than 50%, however, global ly, QUASAR surestimates significantly (up to 10%) the degree of stenosis.