Test–retest reproducibility of a multi‐atlas automated segmentation tool on multimodality brain MRI

Abstract

Abstract Introduction The increasing use of large sample sizes for population and personalized medicine requires high‐throughput tools for imaging processing that can handle large amounts of data with diverse image modalities, perform a biologically meaningful information reduction, and result in comprehensive quantification. Exploring the reproducibility of these tools reveals the specific strengths and weaknesses that heavily influence the interpretation of results, contributing to transparence in science. Methods We tested–retested the reproducibility of MRICloud, a free automated method for whole‐brain, multimodal MRI segmentation and quantification, on two public, independent datasets of healthy adults. Results The reproducibility was extremely high for T1‐volumetric analysis, high for diffusion tensor images (DTI) (however, regionally variable), and low for resting‐state fMRI. Conclusion In general, the reproducibility of the different modalities was slightly superior to that of widely used software. This analysis serves as a normative reference for planning samples and for the interpretation of structure‐based MRI studies.

Keywords

• automated segmentation
• multimodality brain MRI
• reproducibility
• test–retest