Small Intracranial Aneurysms: Diagnostic Accuracy of CT Angiography

Purpose: To assess the accuracy of computed tomographic (CT) angiography for diagnosis of cerebral aneurysms 5 mm or smaller, with digital subtraction angiography (DSA) as the reference standard, in a large patient cohort Materials and Methods: This retrospective study was approved by the local institutional review board with a waiver of written informed consent. A total of 1366 patients who underwent cerebral CT angiography followed by DSA were included. The performance of CT angiography for depiction of aneurysms was evaluated by two readers on a per-patient and per-aneurysm basis and based on size of aneurysm, location, and status of rupture. The performance of CT angiography for diagnosis of aneurysms of different size, location, and rupture status was compared by using chi(2) test. kappa statistic was used to assess interreader agreement for diagnosis of aneurysms. Results: Of 1366 patients, 579 patients had 711 small aneurysms at DSA. By using DSA as the reference standard, the respective sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of CT angiography for readers 1 and 2 for detection of small aneurysms on a per-patient basis were 97.1% (562 of 579) and 97.4% (564 of 579), 98.5% (451 of 458) and 99.1% (454 of 458), and 97.7% (1013 of 1037) and 98.2% (1018 of 1037) and those on a per-aneurysm basis were 95.2% (677 of 711) and 95.4% (678 of 711), 96.6% (451 of 467) and 97.0% (454 of 468), and 95.8% (1128 of 1178) and 96.0% (1132 of 1179). The sensitivities of CT angiography were lower for detection of aneurysms smaller than 3 mm and un-ruptured compared with aneurysms that were 3-5 mm and ruptured (P <.001). No difference existed for the sensitivities of CT angiography for diagnosis of aneurysms in the anterior versus posterior circulation (P >.0167). Excellent or good interreader agreement was found for detection of intracranial aneurysms on a per-patient (kappa = 0.982) and per-aneurysm (kappa = 0.748) basis. Conclusion: This large cohort study demonstrated that CT angiography had high accuracy for detection of small cerebral aneurysms, including those smaller than 3 mm. (C) RSNA, 2017