Validation of mean upper cervical cord area (MUCCA) measurement techniques in multiple sclerosis (MS): High reproducibility and robustness to lesions, but large software and scanner effects.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Atrophy of the spinal cord is known to occur in multiple sclerosis (MS). The mean upper cervical cord area (MUCCA) can be used to measure this atrophy. Currently, several (semi-)automated methods for MUCCA measurement exist, but validation in clinical magnetic resonance (MR) images is lacking.

Methods

Five methods to measure MUCCA (SCT-PropSeg, SCT-DeepSeg, NeuroQLab, Xinapse JIM and ITK-SNAP) were investigated in a predefined upper cervical cord region. First, within-scanner reproducibility and between-scanner robustness were assessed using intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) and Dice's similarity index (SI) in scan-rescan 3DT1-weighted images (brain, including cervical spine using a head coil) performed on three 3 T MR machines (GE MR750, Philips Ingenui

SUBMITTER: Weeda MM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6704046 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature