Does Magnetic Resonance Angiography or Duplex Ultrasound improve diagnostic accuracy for carotid artery stenosis compared to Digital Subtraction Angiography?
MRA provides superior discriminatory power to DUS for severe carotid stenosis, while both modalities are highly accurate for detecting occlusion when compared to the DSA reference standard.
These results suggest that MRA has a better discriminatory power compared with DUS in diagnosing 70% to 99% stenosis and is a sensitive and specific test compared with DSA in the evaluation of carotid artery stenosis. For detecting occlusion, both DUS and MRA are very accurate.
Nederkoorn et al. (Thu,) studied this question.