PILLAR: ParaspInaL muscLe segmentAtion pRoject - a comprehensive online resource to guide manual segmentation of paraspinal muscles from magnetic resonance imaging

BACKGROUND: There is an increasing interest in assessing paraspinal morphology and composition in relation to low back pain (LBP). However, variations in methods and segmentation protocols contribute to the inconsistent findings in the literature. We present an on-line resource, the ParaspInaL muscLe segmentAtion pRoject (PILLAR, https://projectpillar.github.io/), to provide a detailed description and visual guide of a segmentation protocol by using the publicly available ITK-SNAP software and discuss related challenges when performing paraspinal lumbar muscles segmentations from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). METHODS: T2-weighted and corresponding fat-water IDEAL axial MRI from 3 males and 3 females (2 chronic LBP and 1 control for each sex) were used to demonstrate our segmentation protocol for each lumbar paraspinal muscle (erector spinae, lumbar multifidus, quadratus lumborum and psoas) and lumbar spinal level (L1-L5). RESULTS: Proper segmentation requires an understanding of the anatomy of paraspinal lumbar muscles and the variations in paraspinal muscle morphology and composition due to age, sex, and the presence of LBP or related spinal pathologies. Other challenges in segmentation includes the presence and variations of intramuscular and epimuscular fat, and side-to-side asymmetry. CONCLUSION: The growing interest to assess the lumbar musculature and its role in the development and recurrence of LBP prompted the need for comprehensive and easy-to-follow resources, such as the PILLAR project to reduce inconsistencies in segmentation protocols. Standardizing manual muscle measurements from MRI will facilitate comparisons between studies while the field is progressively moving towards the automatization of paraspinal muscle measurements for large cohort studies.