Skip to content
Open Imaging Index
MRI Spinal cord

Spine Generic Multi-Subject (ds001919)

Spine Generic Public Database (Multi-Subject)

Cervical spinal cord MRI of healthy adults scanned with one harmonized quantitative protocol at more than 40 sites on GE, Philips and Siemens 3T systems, collected to measure reproducibility and set normative values, with cord segmentations and disc labels.

Go to dataset Edit Report

Overview

The Spine Generic multi-subject database collects cervical spinal cord MRI from healthy volunteers, scanned at centers around the world with one consensus protocol for quantitative spinal cord imaging. The project, led from Polytechnique Montreal, measured how much cord metrics vary within and across sites and manufacturers, and published normative values. The data first appeared as OpenNeuro ds001919 in 2019 and is now maintained as a git-annex repository on GitHub with versioned releases archived on Zenodo; release r20250314 is described here.

Composition

Release r20250314 lists 267 participants, 125 women and 142 men, aged 19 to 56 years (median 29). The 2021 data descriptor analysed 260 of them from 42 centers, with a median age of 28. Most sites scanned six participants, three men and three women. Every participant has a T1-weighted MPRAGE-type scan, a T2-weighted 3D fast spin echo scan, a multi-echo gradient echo (T2*-weighted) scan and a diffusion-weighted scan of the cervical cord. 259 also have the magnetization transfer series (MT on, MT off and a T1-weighted gradient echo) used to compute MT ratio and MT saturation. A later radiological review of the T2-weighted scans labelled 62 participants as having asymptomatic mild cord compression and 2 as having degenerative cervical myelopathy.

Acquisition

All sites used the spine generic protocol at 3 T, built from product sequences on GE, Philips and Siemens systems. According to participants.tsv, 180 participants were scanned on Siemens, 50 on Philips and 37 on GE scanners. T1-weighted and T2-weighted scans are defaced.

Annotations

The derivatives folder holds spinal cord segmentations for every contrast (produced with the Spinal Cord Toolbox), manually placed intervertebral disc labels on the T1w and T2w scans, soft segmentations, and smaller sets of gray matter, cerebrospinal fluid, spinal canal and nerve rootlet labels.

Known limitations

  • Participants are mostly young adults; older ages are sparse.
  • A few sites deviated from the protocol (for example a longer repetition time for the MT scans), and some scans have motion or repositioning artifacts; the repository tracks these as data-quality issues.
  • Centers with several scanners could rescan the same people on each, so site ids are not always independent.
  • The license field in dataset_description.json (CC0) disagrees with the repository LICENSE and Zenodo record (CC BY 4.0).

Cohort

Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 267 subjects.

Sex

  • Female 125 47%
  • Male 142 53%

sex in participants.tsv of spine-generic/data-multi-subject r20250314 (CC BY 4.0)

Contrast / sequence

Groups can overlap

  • T1-weighted 267 100%
  • T2-weighted 267 100%
  • T2*-weighted 267 100%
  • Diffusion-weighted 267 100%

sub-*/anat/*_T1w.nii.gz, sub-*/anat/*_T2w.nii.gz, sub-*/anat/*_T2star.nii.gz, sub-*/dwi/*_dwi.nii.gz in File tree of spine-generic/data-multi-subject r20250314 (CC BY 4.0), counted per NIfTI file

Scanner vendor

  • Siemens Healthineers 180 67%
  • Philips 50 19%
  • GE HealthCare 37 14%

manufacturer in participants.tsv of spine-generic/data-multi-subject r20250314 (CC BY 4.0)

Age

mean 30.1 ± 6.6, median 29, range 19 to 56

0
50
100
144
10-1920-2930-3940-4950-59

age in participants.tsv of spine-generic/data-multi-subject r20250314 (CC BY 4.0)

Condition

Groups can overlap

  • Healthy control 203 76%

pathology in participants.tsv of spine-generic/data-multi-subject r20250314 (CC BY 4.0)

Age by sex

Reported cross table. Missing cells were not published (fewer than 10 or not reported).

Female Male
  • 42
    30-39
    59
  • 74
    20-29
    70

sex, age in participants.tsv of spine-generic/data-multi-subject r20250314 (CC BY 4.0)

Contrast combinations

How many subjects have exactly each set of contrasts.

T1wT2wT2starwdwiSubjects with exactly this set
267

sub-*/ in File tree of spine-generic/data-multi-subject r20250314 (CC BY 4.0), counted per NIfTI file

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
Open download

Download without an account

Access page

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

Use, share and adapt the data for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you credit the creators.

The repository LICENSE file and the Zenodo record of release r20250314 state CC BY 4.0. The dataset_description.json still reads "CC0", and the earlier OpenNeuro snapshot ds001919 1.0.0 read "MIT"; the maintainers changed the repository license to CC BY 4.0 in 2021 to match Zenodo.

Original license text Version read: 4.0 Checked 2026-10-07

What you can do

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you can share

  • Yes
  • Yes
  • Yes

What you must do

  • Yes
  • Share alike No
  • No
  • No
  • Manuscript review No
  • Release code No
  • Return results No
  • Delete after use No

Limits

  • No
  • Location limits No

Citation

Cohen-Adad J, Alonso-Ortiz E, Abramovic M, et al. Open-access quantitative MRI data of the spinal cord and reproducibility across participants, sites and manufacturers. Scientific Data 8, 219 (2021). doi:10.1038/s41597-021-00941-8

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.