A New MRI Grading System for Cervical Foraminal Stenosis Based on Axial T2-Weighted Images

ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability of a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) grading system for cervical neural foraminal stenosis (NFS).ResultsFor the distinction among the three individual grades at all six neural foramina, the ICC ranged from 0.68 to 0.73, indicating fair to good reproducibility. The percentage agreement ranged from 60.2% to 70.6%, and the kappa values (κ = 0.50-0.58) indicated fair to moderate agreement. The percentages of intraobserver agreement ranged from 85.4% to 93.8% (κ = 0.80-0.92), indicating near perfect agreement.ConclusionThe new MRI grading system shows sufficient interobserver and intraobserver agreement to reliably assess cervical NFS.