Cord Finder - Introduction

The Cord Finder tool can be used to isolate the spinal cord on MRI spinal cord scans, and to calculate the cross-sectional areas along the cord, perpendicular to the cord axis. In addition, there is a specialised tool ( Cord Follow-Up) for estimating the change in atrophy between two time-points.

Start the Cord Finder tool from the Toolkits menu:

The Cord Finder tool will now appear as shown below:

Note that the ROI Toolkit also pops up when you start the Cord Finder.

The procedure for outlining the cord and calculating the cord areas can be summarised as follows:

• Load an axial (transverse) image containing an MRI cord scan into Jim's display. You can use Cord Finder with either T₁- or T₂-weighted images. If your images are not axial, you will need to reformat them to approximately axial orientation using either the Image Resampler or Multi-Planar Reconstruction tools.
• Mark the centre of the spinal cord on your desired range of slices using the ROI Toolkit.
• Automatically outline the cord, and review the outline produced by Cord Finder.
• Calculate the areas and volume of the cord over the selected range of slices.