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Open Imaging Index
MRI Brain

Edinburgh PVS 1.5T vs 3T Pilot

Harmonisation of Enlarged Perivascular Spaces Quantified from Brain Magnetic Resonance Images acquired at 1.5T vs. 3T, Data from a pilot study

Brain MRI of healthy adult volunteers scanned back to back at 1.5T and 3T, collected to test whether perivascular space measurements can be harmonised across field strengths. Images are not shared; PVS scores, measurements and harmonisation scripts are public.

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Overview

This entry covers a pilot study from the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. While a 1.5T research scanner was being replaced by a 3T scanner, healthy adult volunteers were imaged on both machines back to back, so that long-term studies could be carried over between field strengths. The release on Edinburgh DataShare uses these paired scans to ask how enlarged perivascular spaces (PVS) measured at 1.5T compare with those measured at 3T, and whether ComBat or z-score harmonisation closes the gap. The MRI images are not part of the release.

Composition

The study README reports 130 volunteers recruited through local networks, aged 20 to 80 (mean 45.44, SD 13.71), 81 of them women, with no medication, no chronic disease and no history of brain disease. A few had hypertension, high cholesterol or a heart condition. The DataShare abstract states that brain MRI from 100 of these adults was analysed, and the released participant table has 100 rows, each with a 1.5T and a 3T protocol. Sex and age are given only for the 130 recruited.

Acquisition

Scans were done at the Edinburgh Imaging Facility on a 1.5T GE Signa HDx with an 8-channel head coil and a 3T Siemens Prisma with a 32-channel head coil. Volunteers were randomised to one of four main protocol families with variations. The protocol table lists T1-weighted, T2-weighted, FLAIR and susceptibility-weighted imaging, with nearly isotropic T1-weighted voxels of 1 to 1.3 mm.

Annotations

A trained clinician rated PVS in the basal ganglia and centrum semiovale on T1- and T2-weighted images with a published visual scale, blind to scanner and protocol, and repeated ratings for intra-observer agreement. PVS were also segmented automatically on T1-weighted images with two filters (Frangi and RORPO), and counts, volumes and lengths were derived per region. The release holds these scores and measurements before and after harmonisation, the protocol pairing per volunteer, and the Matlab scripts and figures.

Known limitations

  • MRI images and PVS masks are not shared, and no terms for them are published.
  • Sex and age are reported for the 130 recruited volunteers, not for the 100 analysed.
  • Single site; the 1.5T and 3T protocols differ in more than field strength.

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 100 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 81 100%

Covers 81 of 100 subjects.

Methods: Sample in 1_5Tvs3T_Readme.pdf, README shipped with the DataShare item

Field strength

  • 1.5 T 100 100%
  • 3 T 100 100%

1_5T_Protocol, 3T_Protocol in Confounders.csv in Input_Output_data_csv_files.zip (DataShare, CC BY 4.0), counted per participant row

Age

mean 45.4 ± 13.7

No age bins reported.

Methods: Sample in 1_5Tvs3T_Readme.pdf, README shipped with the DataShare item

Condition

Groups can overlap

  • Healthy control 100 100%

Methods: Sample in 1_5Tvs3T_Readme.pdf, README shipped with the DataShare item

Country

  • United Kingdom 100 100%

Authors and Methods in 1_5Tvs3T_Readme.pdf, README shipped with the DataShare item

License and access

Our reading of the license, not legal advice. Before you use the data, read the original license and confirm that your use is allowed. We take no responsibility for how you use a dataset. Full disclaimer

Access
Not shared

The data are not available outside the institution or study that holds them

The Edinburgh DataShare release holds no MRI images. It contains the imaging protocol table, per-scan PVS visual scores and automated PVS counts, volumes and lengths before and after harmonisation, and Matlab scripts, openly downloadable under CC BY 4.0.

Access page

No published license or data use terms

The data holder has published no license and no data use terms. Any use, sharing or commercial right has to be agreed with the data holder, and nothing can be assumed to be allowed. Default copyright and data protection law still apply.

No license or data use terms are stated for the MRI images. The CC BY 4.0 license of the DataShare item covers only the released measurements, documents and scripts.

Original license text Checked 2026-10-08

What you can do

  • Commercial use Not stated
  • Not stated
  • Train ML models Not stated
  • Create derived data Not stated
  • Publish results Not stated

What you can share

  • Share the data Not stated
  • Share derived data Not stated
  • Share trained models Not stated

What you must do

  • Cite or credit Not stated
  • Share alike Not stated
  • Sign an agreement Not stated
  • Ethics approval Not stated
  • Manuscript review Not stated
  • Release code Not stated
  • Return results Not stated
  • Delete after use Not stated

Limits

  • No re-identification Not stated
  • Location limits Not stated

Citation

Valdés Hernández, M. C., Duarte Coello, R., Morozova, A., McFadden, J., Jardine, C., Barclay, G., MacIntyre, D., Chappell, F. M., Stringer, M., Thrippleton, M. J., & Wardlaw, J. M. (2024). Harmonisation of Enlarged Perivascular Spaces Quantified from Brain Magnetic Resonance Images acquired at 1.5T vs. 3T, Data from a pilot study [dataset]. University of Edinburgh. https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/7782

Sources

Every number on this page comes from one of these documents. Each chart names the table or page it is taken from. The raw numbers are in stats.csv.