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Validation of a semiautomated spinal cord segmentation method
Author(s) -
El Mendili MohamedMounir,
Chen Raphaël,
Tiret Brice,
PélégriniIssac Mélanie,
CohenAdad Julien,
Lehéricy Stéphane,
Pradat PierreFrançois,
Benali Habib
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of magnetic resonance imaging
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.563
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1522-2586
pISSN - 1053-1807
DOI - 10.1002/jmri.24571
Subject(s) - medicine , spinal cord , segmentation , reproducibility , cord , nuclear medicine , anatomy , artificial intelligence , surgery , computer science , mathematics , statistics , psychiatry
Purpose To validate semiautomated spinal cord segmentation in healthy subjects and patients with neurodegenerative diseases and trauma. Materials and Methods Forty‐nine healthy subjects, as well as 29 patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, 19 with spinal muscular atrophy, and 14 with spinal cord injuries were studied. Cord area was measured from T 2 ‐weighted 3D turbo spin echo images (cord levels from C2 to T9) using the semiautomated segmentation method of Losseff et al (Brain [1996] 119(Pt 3):701–708), compared with manual segmentation. Reproducibility was evaluated using the inter‐ and intraobserver coefficient of variation (CoV). Accuracy was assessed using the Dice similarity coefficient (DSC). Robustness to initialization was assessed by simulating modifications to the contours drawn manually prior to segmentation. Results Mean interobserver CoV was 4.00% for manual segmentation (1.90% for Losseff's method) in the cervical region and 5.62% (respectively 2.19%) in the thoracic region. Mean intraobserver CoV was 2.34% for manual segmentation (1.08% for Losseff's method) in the cervical region and 2.35% (respectively 1.34%) in the thoracic region. DSC was high (0.96) in both cervical and thoracic regions. DSC remained higher than 0.8 even when modifying initial contours by 50%. Conclusion The semiautomated segmentation method showed high reproducibility and accuracy in measuring spinal cord area. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2015;41:454–459. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc .