Open-access quantitative MRI data of the spinal cord and reproducibility across participants, sites and manufacturers.

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

In a companion paper by Cohen-Adad et al. we introduce the spine generic quantitative MRI protocol that provides valuable metrics for assessing spinal cord macrostructural and microstructural integrity. This protocol was used to acquire a single subject dataset across 19 centers and a multi-subject dataset across 42 centers (for a total of 260 participants), spanning the three main MRI manufacturers: GE, Philips and Siemens. Both datasets are publicly available via git-annex. Data were analysed using the Spinal Cord Toolbox to produce normative values as well as inter/intra-site and inter/intra-manufacturer statistics. Reproducibility for the spine generic protocol was high across sites and manufacturers, with an average inter-site coefficient of variation of less than 5% for all the metrics. Full documentation and results can be found at https://spine-generic.rtfd.io/ . The datasets and analysis pipeline will help pave the way towards accessible and reproducible quantitative MRI in the spinal cord.