Boundary shift integral to compute brain and cervical spinal cord longitudinal volume changes using the same 3DT1w volumetric scans in multiple sclerosis

Brain atrophy is considered to be the net accumulative irreversible disease burden as the ultimate consequence of different pathological processes found in the multiple sclerosis brain. A recent cross-sectional study demonstrated the possibility to assess atrophy of the spinal cord using 3DT1w brain volumetric scans. However, to date, no unified technique has been presented to longitudinally assess brain and spinal cord atrophy using the same MRI acquisition. Here we present a proof-of-concept data from a pipeline that uses the boundary shift integral to compute both brain and cervical spinal cord atrophy rates using the same 3DT1w brain volumetric scans.