Rapid automated quantification of cerebral leukoaraiosis on CT images:A Multicenter Validation Study

Purpose - To validate a fully-automated, machine-learning method (random forest) for segmenting cerebral white matter lesions (WML) on computerized tomography (CT). Materials and Methods – A retrospective sample of 1082 acute ischemic stroke cases was obtained, comprising unselected patients: 1) treated with thrombolysis; or 2) undergoing contemporaneous MR imaging and CT; and 3) a subset of IST-3 trial participants. Automated (‘Auto’) WML images were validated relative to experts’ manual tracings on CT, and co-registered FLAIR-MRI; and ratings using two conventional ordinal scales. Analyses included correlations between CT and MR imaging volumes, and agreements between Auto and expert ratings. Results - Auto WML volumes correlated strongly with expert-delineated WML volumes on MR imaging and on CT (r2=0.85, 0.71 respectively; p0.05). Auto preprocessing failure rate was 4%; rating errors occurred in a further 4%. Total Auto processing time averaged 109s (range: 79 - 140 s). Conclusion - An automated method for quantifying CT cerebral white matter lesions achieves a similar accuracy to experts in unselected and multicenter cohorts