Abstract #1119

Spinal Cord Template and a Semi-Automatic Image Processing Pipeline

Vladimir S. Fonov¹, Julien Cohen-Adad², D. Louis Collins¹

¹Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada; ²Department of Electrical Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

We present a method to build a spinal cord template based on an unbiased average of T2-weighted data from 9 subjects using publicly-available software tools. We propose to use the template to define a standard analysis space for the spinal cord, similar to the Talairach space for brain. We then present an image processing pipeline to demonstrate the usefulness of the template in the evaluation of local volume differences between the spinal cord of one subject and the spinal cord template. Other uses include regional segmentation and VBM analysis.