Abstract #4825

High reproducibility and robustness to lesions, but large software and scanner effects for mean upper cervical cord area (MUCCA) measurement in MS

Merlin M Weeda¹, Sander M Middelkoop¹, Martijn D Steenwijk², Marita Daams¹, Houshang Amiri¹, Iman Brouwer¹, Joep Killestein³, Bernard MJ Uitdehaag³, Iris Dekker³, Carsten Lukas⁴, Barbara Bellenberg⁴, Frederik Barkhof^1,5, Petra JW Pouwels¹, and Hugo Vrenken¹

¹Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, MS Center Amsterdam, Amsterdam Neuroscience, Amsterdam UMC - location VUmc, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ²Department of Anatomy and Neurosciences, MS Center Amsterdam, Amsterdam Neuroscience, Amsterdam UMC - location VUmc, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ³Department of Neurology, MS Center Amsterdam, Amsterdam Neuroscience, Amsterdam UMC - location VUmc, Amsterdam, Netherlands, ⁴Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, St. Josef Hospital, Ruhr University, Bochum, Germany, ⁵Institutes of Neurology and Healthcare Engineering UCL, London, United Kingdom

Atrophy of the spinal cord is known to occur in multiple sclerosis (MS). To measure such atrophy, the mean upper cervical cord area (MUCCA) can be assessed. We tested five different (semi-)automated spinal cord segmentation methods (SCT-PropSeg, SCT-DeepSeg, ITK-SNAP, NeuroQLab, Xinapse JIM) in terms of their reproducibility, robustness, and the influence of lesions on the segmentations. MUCCA from all scanners was highly reproducible within-scanner, but not between-scanner or between-methods. The presence of lesions in the upper cervical cord did not affect the accuracy of MUCCA measurements in any of the methods tested.

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