Table 1.

Results from outlining the spinal cord on the MVCT scans of three patients. Each patient has 30 scans, giving 90 scans in total. Comparisons have been made between auto-contours and manually drawn contours (upper row for each parameter) and between two sets of manual contours from an intra-observer study (lower row for each parameter). The numbers of MVCT scans and slices relative to each comparison are shown. Results are given for the median, mean and standard deviation of the conformity index, and of the distance between centres (mm); and for the mean of the distance (mm) to conformity, of the difference (mm) in left–right dimensions, and of the difference (mm) in anterior–posterior dimensions. Quoted uncertainties are statistical.

Patient	1	2	3	Total
Slices	567	801	739	2107
	558	801	749	2108
Median CI	$0.801\pm 0.004$	$0.762\pm 0.004$	$0.719\pm 0.005$	$0.759\pm 0.003$
	$0.836\pm 0.003$	$0.813\pm 0.003$	$0.814\pm 0.003$	$0.820\pm 0.002$
Mean CI	$0.790\pm 0.003$	$0.752\pm 0.003$	$0.701\pm 0.004$	$0.744\pm 0.002$
	$0.825\pm 0.003$	$0.805\pm 0.002$	$0.804\pm 0.003$	$0.810\pm 0.002$
Std Dev CI	0.072	0.082	0.114	0.099
	0.059	0.068	0.076	0.070
Median DBC	$0.71\pm 0.02$	$0.88\pm 0.02$	$1.00\pm 0.03$	$0.87\pm 0.01$
	$0.63\pm 0.02$	$0.66\pm 0.02$	$0.60\pm 0.02$	$0.64\pm 0.01$
Mean DBC	$0.79\pm 0.02$	$0.92\pm 0.02$	$1.09\pm 0.02$	$0.95\pm 0.01$
	$0.69\pm 0.02$	$0.71\pm 0.01$	$0.68\pm 0.01$	$0.69\pm 0.01$
Std Dev DBC	0.47	0.47	0.62	0.54
	0.36	0.38	0.39	0.38
Mean DTC	$0.13\pm 0.02$	$0.16\pm 0.01$	$0.24\pm 0.02$	$0.18\pm 0.01$
	$0.02\pm 0.01$	$0.04\pm 0.01$	$0.01\pm 0.01$	$0.03\pm 0.01$
Mean L-R diff	$0.30\pm 0.06$	$-0.44\pm 0.04$	$-0.85\pm 0.05$	$-0.38\pm 0.03$
	$-0.28\pm 0.04$	$-0.20\pm 0.03$	$-0.28\pm 0.04$	$-0.25\pm 0.02$
Mean A-P diff	$0.13\pm 0.04$	$0.62\pm 0.04$	$0.93\pm 0.06$	$0.60\pm 0.03$
	$0.21\pm 0.03$	$0.33\pm 0.03$	$0.13\pm 0.03$	$0.23\pm 0.02$