T11: Segmenting three anatomical structures in lumbar spine MRI¶
Objective:
Develop a model to segment three key anatomical structures in lumbar spine MRI scans:
- Vertebrae (excluding the sacrum)
- Intervertebral discs (IVDs)
- Spinal canal
Patient Population:
39 patients with a history of low back pain, retrospectively collected from four hospitals in the Netherlands:
- One university medical center
- Two regional hospitals
- One orthopedic hospital
- 62% female
- Data acquired between January 2019 and March 2022
- Total of 97 MRI series
Imaging Data:
- Up to three sagittal MRI series per patient
- Modalities include T1-weighted and T2-weighted sequences
- Voxel size ranges:
- From 0.90 × 0.47 × 0.47 mm
- To 9.63 × 1.06 × 1.23 mm
- High-resolution sequences acquired using SPACE technique when available
- Manual segmentations for all visible vertebrae (excluding sacrum), IVDs, and the spinal canal
Test Data:
Unlabeled sagittal MRI series with similar acquisition and resolution profiles. Participants must output segmentation masks for the three anatomical structures.
Reference Standard:
Manual segmentations performed by a trained medical trainee under supervision of a medical imaging expert and an experienced musculoskeletal radiologist.
Evaluation Metrics:
Segmentation accuracy is assessed using the Dice coefficient, calculated in 3D for each anatomical structure:
- Vertebrae
- Intervertebral discs
- Spinal canal
The final score is the mean Dice score across all three structures.
Relation to Existing Challenges:¶
- Task 11 is adapted from the SPIDER Challenge
- Unlike SPIDER, which used a mean-relative-rank ranking scheme, this task simplifies evaluation by using a single overall mean Dice score.