Fig. 5.

Quantitative (top row) vs. qualitative (bottom row) assessment of lumbar spinal stenosis severity. Texture analysis (TA) proved excellent reproducibility and objectivity regardless of whether only the central spinal canal was assessed (top left, red), or if instead the epidural sac and lateral recesses (top red, yellow) were included for measurements of the cross-sectional area. Moreover, TA outperforms qualitative approaches that differentiate between severe (bottom left) and extreme cases with epidural fat obliteration (bottom right)