Measurement of brain atrophy in multiple sclerosis – a cross-sectional retrospective study

Background: Brain atrophy is a key feature of multiple sclerosis. To quantify brain atrophy with MRI, simple 2D measures like third ventricular width (TVW) and bicaudatio ratio (BCR) or computer-based segmentation procedures can be applied. The latter usually are generated using T1-weighted 3D data sets (MPRage sequences) and allow the quantification of the brain parenchymal fraction (BPF). Due to high methodological requirements, segmentation based methods are not part of the clinical routine yet. Objective: To investigate in a cross-sectional setting the correlation between different measures of cerebral atrop…