Magnetic resonance imaging provides comparable spinal curvature measurements to computerized tomography

Motivation: Spinal curvature measurements may be used to better understand scoliosis, lordosis, and low back anatomy. The unknown effect of the type of imaging modality on semi-automatically measured spinal curvature motivated this study, as well as the unknown relationship between image contrast and curvature measurements. Goal(s): To quantify how spinal curvature measurements are impacted by changing imaging modalities, specifically between CT and T1-weighted MR images, and between T1-weighted and T2-weighted MR images. Approach: We compared 20 patients' spinal curvature, calculated four separate ways from their L5-L1 vertebral centroids in each imaging modality. Results: We found no significant differences across modalities in calculating spinal curvature. Impact: This study impacts research done between CT scans and MR images, supporting intra-modality spinal curvature calculations from vertebral centroids calculated semi-automatically. This study also supports the equivalency of spinal curvature calculations from CT scans, T1-weighted and T2-weighted MR images.