Measuring Carotid Intima-Media Thickness in Young Adults Born Preterm: Comparison of Manual Versus Semi-automated B-Mode Ultrasound
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Young adults born very preterm have increased cardiovascular risks. While intima-media thickness of the common carotid artery is an early marker of atherosclerosis in adults, the most reliable method of its measurement is not established in this population. The purpose of this study is to compare manual and semi-automated B-mode ultrasound intima-media thickness measurement techniques in adults born very preterm and full-term. Methods: Intima-media thickness was measured in adults 18 to 29 years born very preterm (<30 weeks’ gestation) or full-term (≥37 weeks’ gestation) using B-mode ultrasound. Analyses included intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and relationships with prematurity status, age, body mass index, and metabolic and respiratory comorbidities. Results: There were 86 preterm-born participants (58% women) and 85 full-term (56% women), mean age 23 ± 2 years. Intra-observer agreement was better using semi-automated (ICC = 0.89; 95% confidence interval (CI) = [0.86-0.91]) than manual measurement (ICC = 0.73; 95% CI = [0.65-0.79]). Measures obtained using both techniques did not detect any differences according to prematurity status, did not correlate with age, and moderately correlated with body mass index. The semi-automated technique showed higher intima-media thickness values in men vs women and overall gave higher values. Results obtained through both techniques moderately correlated with each other when looking at subgroups: preterm group ICC of 0.53, full-term group ICC of 0.62. Conclusion: Manual and semi-automated intima-media thickness measurements moderately correlate in young adults. The semi-automated technique is more reproducible. Both techniques are useful in discriminating intima-media thickness according to weight. This study identifies variance of results according to different techniques of measurements. Adherence to a single technique is recommended in young adults born prematurely. Clinical implication includes adherence to the same technique for risk stratification and for follow-up of these patients.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".