Generic acquisition protocol for quantitative MRI of the spinal cord

Julien Cohen-Adad; Eva Alonso-Ortiz; Mihael Abramovic; Carina Arneitz; Nicole Atcheson; Laura Barlow; Robert L. Barry; Markus Barth; Marco Battiston; Christian Büchel; Matthew Budde; Virginie Callot; Anna J.E. Combes; Benjamin De Leener; Maxime Descoteaux; Paulo Loureiro de Sousa; Marek Dostál; Julien Doyon; Adam Dvorak; Falk Eippert; Karla R. Epperson; Kevin S. Epperson; Patrick Freund; Jürgen Finsterbusch; Alexandru Foias; Michela Fratini; Issei Fukunaga; Claudia A.M.Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott; Giancarlo Germani; Guillaume Gilbert; Federico Giove; Charley Gros; Francesco Grussu; Akifumi Hagiwara; Pierre Gilles Henry; Tomáš Horák; Masaaki Hori; James Joers; Kouhei Kamiya; Haleh Karbasforoushan; Miloš Keřkovský; Ali Khatibi; Joo Won Kim; Nawal Kinany; Hagen Kitzler; Shannon Kolind; Yazhuo Kong; Petr Kudlička; Paul Kuntke; Nyoman D. Kurniawan; Slawomir Kusmia; René Labounek; Maria Marcella Laganà; Cornelia Laule; Christine S. Law; Christophe Lenglet; Tobias Leutritz; Yaou Liu; Sara Llufriu; Sean Mackey; Eloy Martinez-Heras; Loan Mattera; Igor Nestrasil; Kristin P. O’Grady; Nico Papinutto; Daniel Papp; Deborah Pareto; Todd B. Parrish; Anna Pichiecchio; Ferran Prados; Àlex Rovira; Marc J. Ruitenberg; Rebecca S. Samson; Giovanni Savini; Maryam Seif; Alan C. Seifert; Alex K. Smith; Seth A. Smith; Zachary A. Smith; Elisabeth Solana; Yuichi Suzuki; George Tackley; Alexandra Tinnermann; Jan Valošek; Dimitri Van De Ville; Marios C. Yiannakas; Kenneth A. Weber; Nikolaus Weiskopf; Richard G. Wise; Patrik O. Wyss; Junqian Xu

doi:10.1038/s41596-021-00588-0

Generic acquisition protocol for quantitative MRI of the spinal cord

Julien Cohen-Adad^*, Eva Alonso-Ortiz, Mihael Abramovic, Carina Arneitz, Nicole Atcheson, Laura Barlow, Robert L. Barry, Markus Barth, Marco Battiston, Christian Büchel, Matthew Budde, Virginie Callot, Anna J.E. Combes, Benjamin De Leener, Maxime Descoteaux, Paulo Loureiro de Sousa, Marek Dostál, Julien Doyon, Adam Dvorak, Falk EippertKarla R. Epperson, Kevin S. Epperson, Patrick Freund, Jürgen Finsterbusch, Alexandru Foias, Michela Fratini, Issei Fukunaga, Claudia A.M.Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott, Giancarlo Germani, Guillaume Gilbert, Federico Giove, Charley Gros, Francesco Grussu, Akifumi Hagiwara, Pierre Gilles Henry, Tomáš Horák, Masaaki Hori, James Joers, Kouhei Kamiya, Haleh Karbasforoushan, Miloš Keřkovský, Ali Khatibi, Joo Won Kim, Nawal Kinany, Hagen Kitzler, Shannon Kolind, Yazhuo Kong, Petr Kudlička, Paul Kuntke, Nyoman D. Kurniawan, Slawomir Kusmia, René Labounek, Maria Marcella Laganà, Cornelia Laule, Christine S. Law, Christophe Lenglet, Tobias Leutritz, Yaou Liu, Sara Llufriu, Sean Mackey, Eloy Martinez-Heras, Loan Mattera, Igor Nestrasil, Kristin P. O’Grady, Nico Papinutto, Daniel Papp, Deborah Pareto, Todd B. Parrish, Anna Pichiecchio, Ferran Prados, Àlex Rovira, Marc J. Ruitenberg, Rebecca S. Samson, Giovanni Savini, Maryam Seif, Alan C. Seifert, Alex K. Smith, Seth A. Smith, Zachary A. Smith, Elisabeth Solana, Yuichi Suzuki, George Tackley, Alexandra Tinnermann, Jan Valošek, Dimitri Van De Ville, Marios C. Yiannakas, Kenneth A. Weber, Nikolaus Weiskopf, Richard G. Wise, Patrik O. Wyss, Junqian Xu

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

68 Scopus citations

Abstract

Quantitative spinal cord (SC) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) presents many challenges, including a lack of standardized imaging protocols. Here we present a prospectively harmonized quantitative MRI protocol, which we refer to as the spine generic protocol, for users of 3T MRI systems from the three main manufacturers: GE, Philips and Siemens. The protocol provides guidance for assessing SC macrostructural and microstructural integrity: T1-weighted and T2-weighted imaging for SC cross-sectional area computation, multi-echo gradient echo for gray matter cross-sectional area, and magnetization transfer and diffusion weighted imaging for assessing white matter microstructure. In a companion paper from the same authors, the spine generic protocol was used to acquire data across 42 centers in 260 healthy subjects. The key details of the spine generic protocol are also available in an open-access document that can be found at https://github.com/spine-generic/protocols. The protocol will serve as a starting point for researchers and clinicians implementing new SC imaging initiatives so that, in the future, inclusion of the SC in neuroimaging protocols will be more common. The protocol could be implemented by any trained MR technician or by a researcher/clinician familiar with MRI acquisition.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	4611-4632
Number of pages	22
Journal	Nature Protocols
Volume	16
Issue number	10
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-021-00588-0
State	Published - Oct 2021

Funding

We thank G. Moran and B. Schraa (Siemens Healthcare), S. Banerjee and N. Takei (GE Healthcare) for sharing proprietary information and for their help with setting up manufacturer-specific protocols, C. Hurst, A. Cyr, A. Bor\u00E9 and P. Bellec (Functional Neuroimaging Unit), C. Tremblay (Polytechnique Montreal), A. Melek and H. Benali (PERFORM center, Concordia University), I. Levesque (McGill University), C. Nguyen (University of Minnesota), Prof. S. Aoki (Juntendo University Hospital) for helping with data acquisitions, Compute Ontario (https:// computeontario.ca/) and Compute Canada (www.computecanada.ca) for providing the supercomputer infrastructure and all the volunteers who participated in the Spinal Cord MRI Public Database. This work was funded by the Canada Research Chair in Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (950-230815), the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR FDN-143263), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (32454, 34824), the Fonds de Recherche du Qu\u00E9bec\u2013Sant\u00E9 (28826), the Fonds de Recherche du Qu\u00E9bec\u2013Nature et Technologies (2015-PR-182754), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (435897-2013), the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (IVADO and TransMedTech), the Quebec BioImaging Network (5886), Spinal Research (UK), Wings for Life (Austria, #169111) and Craig H. Neilsen Foundation (USA) for the INSPIRED project, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through grants R00EB016689 (R.L.B.), R01EB027779 (R.L.B.), P41 EB027061 (CMRR) and P30 NS076408 (CMRR), the Instituto Investigaci\u00F3n Carlos III (Spain, PI18/00823), the Czech Health Research Council grant no. NV18-04-00159, the Ministry of Health, Czech Republic\u2013conceptual development of research organization (FNBr, 65269705), the National Imaging Facility and Queensland NMR Network (UQ), and SpinalCure Australia (M.J.R.), the European Research Council under the European Union\u2019s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 616905; European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement No 681094, and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) under contract number 15.0137; BMBF (01EW1711A & B) in the framework of ERA-NET NEURON, the European Union\u2019s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 634541, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (R006032/1, M020533/1) and Rosetrees Trust (UK), UK Multiple Sclerosis Society (892/08, 77/2017), NIHR Biomedical Research Centres, UCLH, the Italian Ministry of Health Young Researcher Grant 2013 (GR-2013-02358177), the FISR Project \u2018Tecnopolo di nanotecnologia e fotonica per la medicina di precisione\u2019 (funded by MIUR/CNR, CUP B83B17000010001), TECNOMED project (funded by Regione Puglia, CUP B84I18000540002), Million Dollar Bike Ride from the University of Pennsylvania (MDBR-17-123-MPS), investigator-initiated PREdICT study at the Vall d\u2019Hebron Institute of Oncology (Barcelona), funded by AstraZeneca and CRIS Cancer Foundation, the Wellcome Trust (UK) (203139/Z/16/Z), Systems, Technologies and Applications for Radiofrequency and Communications (STARaCOM), Swiss National Science Foundation (PCEFP3_181362/1) and the Max Planck Society and European Research Council (ERC StG 758974). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology

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10.1038/s41596-021-00588-0

Cite this

Cohen-Adad, J., Alonso-Ortiz, E., Abramovic, M., Arneitz, C., Atcheson, N., Barlow, L., Barry, R. L., Barth, M., Battiston, M., Büchel, C., Budde, M., Callot, V., Combes, A. J. E., De Leener, B., Descoteaux, M., de Sousa, P. L., Dostál, M., Doyon, J., Dvorak, A., ... Xu, J. (2021). Generic acquisition protocol for quantitative MRI of the spinal cord. Nature Protocols, 16(10), 4611-4632. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-021-00588-0

@article{7b25897b66a844e0b59856819c8a5a78,

title = "Generic acquisition protocol for quantitative MRI of the spinal cord",

abstract = "Quantitative spinal cord (SC) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) presents many challenges, including a lack of standardized imaging protocols. Here we present a prospectively harmonized quantitative MRI protocol, which we refer to as the spine generic protocol, for users of 3T MRI systems from the three main manufacturers: GE, Philips and Siemens. The protocol provides guidance for assessing SC macrostructural and microstructural integrity: T1-weighted and T2-weighted imaging for SC cross-sectional area computation, multi-echo gradient echo for gray matter cross-sectional area, and magnetization transfer and diffusion weighted imaging for assessing white matter microstructure. In a companion paper from the same authors, the spine generic protocol was used to acquire data across 42 centers in 260 healthy subjects. The key details of the spine generic protocol are also available in an open-access document that can be found at https://github.com/spine-generic/protocols. The protocol will serve as a starting point for researchers and clinicians implementing new SC imaging initiatives so that, in the future, inclusion of the SC in neuroimaging protocols will be more common. The protocol could be implemented by any trained MR technician or by a researcher/clinician familiar with MRI acquisition.",

author = "Julien Cohen-Adad and Eva Alonso-Ortiz and Mihael Abramovic and Carina Arneitz and Nicole Atcheson and Laura Barlow and Barry, {Robert L.} and Markus Barth and Marco Battiston and Christian B{\"u}chel and Matthew Budde and Virginie Callot and Combes, {Anna J.E.} and {De Leener}, Benjamin and Maxime Descoteaux and {de Sousa}, {Paulo Loureiro} and Marek Dost{\'a}l and Julien Doyon and Adam Dvorak and Falk Eippert and Epperson, {Karla R.} and Epperson, {Kevin S.} and Patrick Freund and J{\"u}rgen Finsterbusch and Alexandru Foias and Michela Fratini and Issei Fukunaga and Wheeler-Kingshott, {Claudia A.M.Gandini} and Giancarlo Germani and Guillaume Gilbert and Federico Giove and Charley Gros and Francesco Grussu and Akifumi Hagiwara and Henry, {Pierre Gilles} and Tom{\'a}{\v s} Hor{\'a}k and Masaaki Hori and James Joers and Kouhei Kamiya and Haleh Karbasforoushan and Milo{\v s} Ke{\v r}kovsk{\'y} and Ali Khatibi and Kim, {Joo Won} and Nawal Kinany and Hagen Kitzler and Shannon Kolind and Yazhuo Kong and Petr Kudli{\v c}ka and Paul Kuntke and Kurniawan, {Nyoman D.} and Slawomir Kusmia and Ren{\'e} Labounek and Lagan{\`a}, {Maria Marcella} and Cornelia Laule and Law, {Christine S.} and Christophe Lenglet and Tobias Leutritz and Yaou Liu and Sara Llufriu and Sean Mackey and Eloy Martinez-Heras and Loan Mattera and Igor Nestrasil and O{\textquoteright}Grady, {Kristin P.} and Nico Papinutto and Daniel Papp and Deborah Pareto and Parrish, {Todd B.} and Anna Pichiecchio and Ferran Prados and {\`A}lex Rovira and Ruitenberg, {Marc J.} and Samson, {Rebecca S.} and Giovanni Savini and Maryam Seif and Seifert, {Alan C.} and Smith, {Alex K.} and Smith, {Seth A.} and Smith, {Zachary A.} and Elisabeth Solana and Yuichi Suzuki and George Tackley and Alexandra Tinnermann and Jan Valo{\v s}ek and {Van De Ville}, Dimitri and Yiannakas, {Marios C.} and Weber, {Kenneth A.} and Nikolaus Weiskopf and Wise, {Richard G.} and Wyss, {Patrik O.} and Junqian Xu",

note = "Funding Information: We thank G. Moran and B. Schraa (Siemens Healthcare), S. Banerjee and N. Takei (GE Healthcare) for sharing proprietary information and for their help with setting up manufacturer-specific protocols, C. Hurst, A. Cyr, A. Bor{\'e} and P. Bellec (Functional Neuroimaging Unit), C. Tremblay (Polytechnique Montreal), A. Melek and H. Benali (PERFORM center, Concordia University), I. Levesque (McGill University), C. Nguyen (University of Minnesota), Prof. S. Aoki (Juntendo University Hospital) for helping with data acquisitions, Compute Ontario (https:// computeontario.ca/) and Compute Canada (www.computecanada.ca) for providing the supercomputer infrastructure and all the volunteers who participated in the Spinal Cord MRI Public Database. This work was funded by the Canada Research Chair in Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (950-230815), the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR FDN-143263), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (32454, 34824), the Fonds de Recherche du Qu{\'e}bec–Sant{\'e} (28826), the Fonds de Recherche du Qu{\'e}bec–Nature et Technologies (2015-PR-182754), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (435897-2013), the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (IVADO and TransMedTech), the Quebec BioImaging Network (5886), Spinal Research (UK), Wings for Life (Austria, #169111) and Craig H. Neilsen Foundation (USA) for the INSPIRED project, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through grants R00EB016689 (R.L.B.), R01EB027779 (R.L.B.), P41 EB027061 (CMRR) and P30 NS076408 (CMRR), the Instituto Investigaci{\'o}n Carlos III (Spain, PI18/00823), the Czech Health Research Council grant no. NV18-04-00159, the Ministry of Health, Czech Republic–conceptual development of research organization (FNBr, 65269705), the National Imaging Facility and Queensland NMR Network (UQ), and SpinalCure Australia (M.J.R.), the European Research Council under the European Union{\textquoteright}s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 616905; European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement No 681094, and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) under contract number 15.0137; BMBF (01EW1711A & B) in the framework of ERA-NET NEURON, the European Union{\textquoteright}s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 634541, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (R006032/1, M020533/1) and Rosetrees Trust (UK), UK Multiple Sclerosis Society (892/08, 77/2017), NIHR Biomedical Research Centres, UCLH, the Italian Ministry of Health Young Researcher Grant 2013 (GR-2013-02358177), the FISR Project {\textquoteleft}Tecnopolo di nanotecnologia e fotonica per la medicina di precisione{\textquoteright} (funded by MIUR/CNR, CUP B83B17000010001), TECNOMED project (funded by Regione Puglia, CUP B84I18000540002), Million Dollar Bike Ride from the University of Pennsylvania (MDBR-17-123-MPS), investigator-initiated PREdICT study at the Vall d{\textquoteright}Hebron Institute of Oncology (Barcelona), funded by AstraZeneca and CRIS Cancer Foundation, the Wellcome Trust (UK) (203139/Z/16/Z), Systems, Technologies and Applications for Radiofrequency and Communications (STARaCOM), Swiss National Science Foundation (PCEFP3_181362/1) and the Max Planck Society and European Research Council (ERC StG 758974). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.",

year = "2021",

month = oct,

doi = "10.1038/s41596-021-00588-0",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "16",

pages = "4611--4632",

journal = "Nature Protocols",

issn = "1754-2189",

publisher = "Springer Nature",

number = "10",

}

Cohen-Adad, J, Alonso-Ortiz, E, Abramovic, M, Arneitz, C, Atcheson, N, Barlow, L, Barry, RL, Barth, M, Battiston, M, Büchel, C, Budde, M, Callot, V, Combes, AJE, De Leener, B, Descoteaux, M, de Sousa, PL, Dostál, M, Doyon, J, Dvorak, A, Eippert, F, Epperson, KR, Epperson, KS, Freund, P, Finsterbusch, J, Foias, A, Fratini, M, Fukunaga, I, Wheeler-Kingshott, CAMG, Germani, G, Gilbert, G, Giove, F, Gros, C, Grussu, F, Hagiwara, A, Henry, PG, Horák, T, Hori, M, Joers, J, Kamiya, K, Karbasforoushan, H, Keřkovský, M, Khatibi, A, Kim, JW, Kinany, N, Kitzler, H, Kolind, S, Kong, Y, Kudlička, P, Kuntke, P, Kurniawan, ND, Kusmia, S, Labounek, R, Laganà, MM, Laule, C, Law, CS, Lenglet, C, Leutritz, T, Liu, Y, Llufriu, S, Mackey, S, Martinez-Heras, E, Mattera, L, Nestrasil, I, O’Grady, KP, Papinutto, N, Papp, D, Pareto, D, Parrish, TB, Pichiecchio, A, Prados, F, Rovira, À, Ruitenberg, MJ, Samson, RS, Savini, G, Seif, M, Seifert, AC, Smith, AK, Smith, SA, Smith, ZA, Solana, E, Suzuki, Y, Tackley, G, Tinnermann, A, Valošek, J, Van De Ville, D, Yiannakas, MC, Weber, KA, Weiskopf, N, Wise, RG, Wyss, PO & Xu, J 2021, 'Generic acquisition protocol for quantitative MRI of the spinal cord', Nature Protocols, vol. 16, no. 10, pp. 4611-4632. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41596-021-00588-0

TY - JOUR

T1 - Generic acquisition protocol for quantitative MRI of the spinal cord

AU - Cohen-Adad, Julien

AU - Alonso-Ortiz, Eva

AU - Abramovic, Mihael

AU - Arneitz, Carina

AU - Atcheson, Nicole

AU - Barlow, Laura

AU - Barry, Robert L.

AU - Barth, Markus

AU - Battiston, Marco

AU - Büchel, Christian

AU - Budde, Matthew

AU - Callot, Virginie

AU - Combes, Anna J.E.

AU - De Leener, Benjamin

AU - Descoteaux, Maxime

AU - de Sousa, Paulo Loureiro

AU - Dostál, Marek

AU - Doyon, Julien

AU - Dvorak, Adam

AU - Eippert, Falk

AU - Epperson, Karla R.

AU - Epperson, Kevin S.

AU - Freund, Patrick

AU - Finsterbusch, Jürgen

AU - Foias, Alexandru

AU - Fratini, Michela

AU - Fukunaga, Issei

AU - Wheeler-Kingshott, Claudia A.M.Gandini

AU - Germani, Giancarlo

AU - Gilbert, Guillaume

AU - Giove, Federico

AU - Gros, Charley

AU - Grussu, Francesco

AU - Hagiwara, Akifumi

AU - Henry, Pierre Gilles

AU - Horák, Tomáš

AU - Hori, Masaaki

AU - Joers, James

AU - Kamiya, Kouhei

AU - Karbasforoushan, Haleh

AU - Keřkovský, Miloš

AU - Khatibi, Ali

AU - Kim, Joo Won

AU - Kinany, Nawal

AU - Kitzler, Hagen

AU - Kolind, Shannon

AU - Kong, Yazhuo

AU - Kudlička, Petr

AU - Kuntke, Paul

AU - Kurniawan, Nyoman D.

AU - Kusmia, Slawomir

AU - Labounek, René

AU - Laganà, Maria Marcella

AU - Laule, Cornelia

AU - Law, Christine S.

AU - Lenglet, Christophe

AU - Leutritz, Tobias

AU - Liu, Yaou

AU - Llufriu, Sara

AU - Mackey, Sean

AU - Martinez-Heras, Eloy

AU - Mattera, Loan

AU - Nestrasil, Igor

AU - O’Grady, Kristin P.

AU - Papinutto, Nico

AU - Papp, Daniel

AU - Pareto, Deborah

AU - Parrish, Todd B.

AU - Pichiecchio, Anna

AU - Prados, Ferran

AU - Rovira, Àlex

AU - Ruitenberg, Marc J.

AU - Samson, Rebecca S.

AU - Savini, Giovanni

AU - Seif, Maryam

AU - Seifert, Alan C.

AU - Smith, Alex K.

AU - Smith, Seth A.

AU - Smith, Zachary A.

AU - Solana, Elisabeth

AU - Suzuki, Yuichi

AU - Tackley, George

AU - Tinnermann, Alexandra

AU - Valošek, Jan

AU - Van De Ville, Dimitri

AU - Yiannakas, Marios C.

AU - Weber, Kenneth A.

AU - Weiskopf, Nikolaus

AU - Wise, Richard G.

AU - Wyss, Patrik O.

AU - Xu, Junqian

N1 - Funding Information: We thank G. Moran and B. Schraa (Siemens Healthcare), S. Banerjee and N. Takei (GE Healthcare) for sharing proprietary information and for their help with setting up manufacturer-specific protocols, C. Hurst, A. Cyr, A. Boré and P. Bellec (Functional Neuroimaging Unit), C. Tremblay (Polytechnique Montreal), A. Melek and H. Benali (PERFORM center, Concordia University), I. Levesque (McGill University), C. Nguyen (University of Minnesota), Prof. S. Aoki (Juntendo University Hospital) for helping with data acquisitions, Compute Ontario (https:// computeontario.ca/) and Compute Canada (www.computecanada.ca) for providing the supercomputer infrastructure and all the volunteers who participated in the Spinal Cord MRI Public Database. This work was funded by the Canada Research Chair in Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (950-230815), the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR FDN-143263), the Canada Foundation for Innovation (32454, 34824), the Fonds de Recherche du Québec–Santé (28826), the Fonds de Recherche du Québec–Nature et Technologies (2015-PR-182754), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (435897-2013), the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (IVADO and TransMedTech), the Quebec BioImaging Network (5886), Spinal Research (UK), Wings for Life (Austria, #169111) and Craig H. Neilsen Foundation (USA) for the INSPIRED project, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through grants R00EB016689 (R.L.B.), R01EB027779 (R.L.B.), P41 EB027061 (CMRR) and P30 NS076408 (CMRR), the Instituto Investigación Carlos III (Spain, PI18/00823), the Czech Health Research Council grant no. NV18-04-00159, the Ministry of Health, Czech Republic–conceptual development of research organization (FNBr, 65269705), the National Imaging Facility and Queensland NMR Network (UQ), and SpinalCure Australia (M.J.R.), the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 616905; European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement No 681094, and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) under contract number 15.0137; BMBF (01EW1711A & B) in the framework of ERA-NET NEURON, the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 634541, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (R006032/1, M020533/1) and Rosetrees Trust (UK), UK Multiple Sclerosis Society (892/08, 77/2017), NIHR Biomedical Research Centres, UCLH, the Italian Ministry of Health Young Researcher Grant 2013 (GR-2013-02358177), the FISR Project ‘Tecnopolo di nanotecnologia e fotonica per la medicina di precisione’ (funded by MIUR/CNR, CUP B83B17000010001), TECNOMED project (funded by Regione Puglia, CUP B84I18000540002), Million Dollar Bike Ride from the University of Pennsylvania (MDBR-17-123-MPS), investigator-initiated PREdICT study at the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology (Barcelona), funded by AstraZeneca and CRIS Cancer Foundation, the Wellcome Trust (UK) (203139/Z/16/Z), Systems, Technologies and Applications for Radiofrequency and Communications (STARaCOM), Swiss National Science Foundation (PCEFP3_181362/1) and the Max Planck Society and European Research Council (ERC StG 758974). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. Publisher Copyright: © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

PY - 2021/10

Y1 - 2021/10

N2 - Quantitative spinal cord (SC) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) presents many challenges, including a lack of standardized imaging protocols. Here we present a prospectively harmonized quantitative MRI protocol, which we refer to as the spine generic protocol, for users of 3T MRI systems from the three main manufacturers: GE, Philips and Siemens. The protocol provides guidance for assessing SC macrostructural and microstructural integrity: T1-weighted and T2-weighted imaging for SC cross-sectional area computation, multi-echo gradient echo for gray matter cross-sectional area, and magnetization transfer and diffusion weighted imaging for assessing white matter microstructure. In a companion paper from the same authors, the spine generic protocol was used to acquire data across 42 centers in 260 healthy subjects. The key details of the spine generic protocol are also available in an open-access document that can be found at https://github.com/spine-generic/protocols. The protocol will serve as a starting point for researchers and clinicians implementing new SC imaging initiatives so that, in the future, inclusion of the SC in neuroimaging protocols will be more common. The protocol could be implemented by any trained MR technician or by a researcher/clinician familiar with MRI acquisition.

AB - Quantitative spinal cord (SC) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) presents many challenges, including a lack of standardized imaging protocols. Here we present a prospectively harmonized quantitative MRI protocol, which we refer to as the spine generic protocol, for users of 3T MRI systems from the three main manufacturers: GE, Philips and Siemens. The protocol provides guidance for assessing SC macrostructural and microstructural integrity: T1-weighted and T2-weighted imaging for SC cross-sectional area computation, multi-echo gradient echo for gray matter cross-sectional area, and magnetization transfer and diffusion weighted imaging for assessing white matter microstructure. In a companion paper from the same authors, the spine generic protocol was used to acquire data across 42 centers in 260 healthy subjects. The key details of the spine generic protocol are also available in an open-access document that can be found at https://github.com/spine-generic/protocols. The protocol will serve as a starting point for researchers and clinicians implementing new SC imaging initiatives so that, in the future, inclusion of the SC in neuroimaging protocols will be more common. The protocol could be implemented by any trained MR technician or by a researcher/clinician familiar with MRI acquisition.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85112706163&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85112706163&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1038/s41596-021-00588-0

DO - 10.1038/s41596-021-00588-0

M3 - Review article

C2 - 34400839

AN - SCOPUS:85112706163

SN - 1754-2189

VL - 16

SP - 4611

EP - 4632

JO - Nature Protocols

JF - Nature Protocols

IS - 10

ER -

Generic acquisition protocol for quantitative MRI of the spinal cord

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