PAD inter-leg symmetry CE-MRA (San Donato)

A retrospective single-centre cohort from IRCCS Policlinico San Donato near Milan of patients referred for contrast-enhanced MR angiography of the legs because of known or suspected peripheral artery disease (PAD). The study asked whether atherosclerotic narrowing tends to appear in the same arteries of both legs. A Zenodo record with the study title was published in July 2021; its files are restricted and not listed, and the authors share the data on a motivated request.

Composition

82 consecutive patients, 60 men and 22 women, with a mean age of 69 years (standard deviation 9). Patients after a leg amputation and those whose vessels were normal on both sides were left out.

Acquisition

All examinations ran on a 1.5 T Siemens Magnetom Sonata Maestro Class. Each patient had a three-station 3D gradient-echo (FLASH) angiogram covering iliac-femoral, femoral-popliteal and popliteal-tibial segments after an intravenous dose of gadobenate dimeglumine. Maximum intensity projections were reconstructed for reading.

Annotations

For ten artery pairs per patient (common, external and internal iliac; common, deep and superficial femoral; popliteal; anterior and posterior tibial; peroneal), one reader with eight years of experience graded the tightest stenosis on each side on a five-level scale from normal to occluded. This gives 1,640 graded segments. In 71 patients at least one artery pair was diseased on both sides.

Known limitations

• The image files are not openly available, and neither the record nor the paper says whether shared data include images or only the stenosis scores.
• Single centre, single scanner and a single reader, with no follow-up.
• Clinical risk factors such as diabetes or smoking were not collected.