Open-access quantitative MRI data of the spinal cord and reproducibility across participants, sites and manufacturers

Journal article

In a companion paper by Cohen-Adad et al. we introduce the spine generic quantitative MRI protocol that provides valuable metrics for assessing spinal cord macrostructural and microstructural integrity. This protocol was used to acquire a single subject dataset across 19 centers and a multi-subject dataset across 42 centers (for a total of 260 participants), spanning the three main MRI manufacturers: GE, Philips and Siemens. Both datasets are publicly available via git-annex. Data were analysed using the Spinal Cord Toolbox to produce normative values as well as inter/intra-site and inter/intra-manufacturer statistics. Reproducibility for the spine generic protocol was high across sites and manufacturers, with an average inter-site coefficient of variation of less than 5% for all the metrics. Full documentation and results can be found at https://spine-generic.rtfd.io/ . The datasets and analysis pipeline will help pave the way towards accessible and reproducible quantitative MRI in the spinal cord.

Authors: Cohen-Adad, J; Alonso-Ortiz, E; Abramovic, M; Arneitz, C; Atcheson, N

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Nature Research
• Journal: Scientific Data
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 219-219
• Article number: 219
• Publication date: 2021-08-16
• DOI: 10.1038/s41597-021-00941-8
• EISSN: 2052-4463
• ISSN: 2052-4463
• Language: English
• Keywords: Protocol (science); Reproducibility; Data mining; Medicine; Documentation; Computer science; Pathology; Statistics; Spinal cord; Mathematics