Assessment of colorectal liver metastases using MRI and CT: Impact of observer experience on diagnostic performance and inter-observer reproducibility with histopathological correlation

Highlights: • We investigate the impact of experience on CT and MRI reporting of colorectal liver metastases. • Diagnostic quality is significantly influenced by observer experience for both CT and MRI. • MRI is more affected by experience than CT when reporting cases of colorectal liver metastases. - Abstract: Introduction: To compare the diagnostic performance and inter-observer reproducibility of CT and MRI in detecting colorectal liver metastases (CRLM) of observers with different levels of experience. Materials and methods: Data from 51 CT and 54 MRI examinations of 105 patients with CRLM were analysed. Intraoperative and histopathological findings served as the reference standard. Analyses were performed by four observers with varying levels of experience regarding imaging of CRLM (reviewers A, B, C and D with respectively >20, >5, <1 and 0 years of experience). Per-segment sensitivity, specificity, Cohen's kappa (κ) for diagnosed segments and Intra-class Correlation Coefficients (ICC) for reported number of lesions were calculated. Results: CT sensitivity and specificity was for reviewer A 89.71%/94.41%, B 78.50%/88.37%, C 63.55%/85.58%, D 84.11%/78.60% and regarding MRI A 90.40%/95.43%, B 74.40%/90.04%, C 60.00%/85.89% and D 65.60%/75.90%. The overall inter-observer agreement was higher for CT (κ = 0.43, p < 0.001; ICC = 0.75, p < 0.001) than MRI (κ = 0.38, p < 0.001; ICC = 0.65, p < 0.001). The experienced reviewers A and B achieved better agreement for MRI (κ = 0.54, p < 0.001; ICC = 0.77, p < 0.001) than CT (κ = 0.52, p < 0.00; ICC = 0.76, p < 0.001) unlike the less experienced C and D (MRI κ = 0.38, ICC = 0.63 and CT κ = 0.41, ICC = 0.74, respectively, p < 0.001). Conclusions: The proficiency in detection of CRLM is significantly influenced by observer experience, although CT interpretation is less affected than MRI analysis