Comparison of preterm and term equivalent age MRI for the evaluation of preterm brain injury

Objective:to compare information obtained from preterm magnetic resonance imaging (mri; 31–34 weeks) brain scan to that done at term equivalent age.study design:prospective observational study of premature infants with evidence or suspicion of parenchymal brain injury on cranial ultrasound. brain injury on two scans scored using a scoring system and analyzed.results:fourteen infants with a median (range) gestation at birth of 28 (25–29) weeks and birth weight of 1254 (680–1557) grams were studied. there was a strong correlation between the brain injury scores for the two scans (spearman ρ=0.87, p=0.001) with excellent agreement between two radiologists (interclass correlation coefficient 0.9–0.94). there was also a high level of agreement between the preterm and term mri two scores (intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.79 (0.53–0.94)).conclusions:preterm mri is a feasible option for the assessment of preterm brain injury and analysis of data obtained from scan at preterm age is comparable to that obtained at term equivalent age.