Collateral Capacity Assessment: Robustness and Interobserver Agreement of Two Grading Scales and Agreement with Quantitative Scoring

Abstract

Background and Purpose: Intracranial collateral capacity is conducive to imply parenchymal perfusion of affected territory after acute vessel occlusion. The Tan collateral score is commonly used to assess the intracranial collateral capacity; however, this score is coarsely grained and interobserver agreement is low, which reduces prognostic value and clinical utility. We introduce and evaluate an alternative extended Tan score based on the conventional Tan scale and assess the agreement with a quantitative score. Methods: We included 100 consecutive patients with a proven acute single large vessel occlusion of the proximal anterior circulation. Collaterals were graded with the conventional and extended Tan score and an automated quantitative score. The extended Tan score is a finer 6‑scale manual score based on the conventional 4‑point Tan scale. The quantitative score is calculated by an automatic software package (StrokeViewer). Interobserver agreement of the manual scores was assessed with the weighted kappa. The Spearman correlation coefficient was calculated to determine the agreement between the manual and automated collateral scores. Results: The interobserver agreement was higher for the extended score than for the conventional score with a weighted kappa of 0.70 and 0.65, respectively. For the extended and conventional score, the Spearman correlation coefficient for the agreement with the automated score was 0.78 and 0.76, respectively. Conclusion: Because of the good interobserver agreement and good agreement with quantitative assessment, the extended collateral score is a strong candidate to improve prognostic value of collateral assessment and implementation in clinical practice.