Raghotham Sripadraj

Praveen Shastry, Bhawana Sonawane, Kavya Mohan et al.

Background: Accurate spinal structure measurement is crucial for assessing spine health and diagnosing conditions like spondylosis, disc herniation, and stenosis. Manual methods for measuring intervertebral disc height and spinal canal diameter are subjective and time-consuming. Automated solutions are needed to improve accuracy, efficiency, and reproducibility in clinical practice. Purpose: This study develops an autonomous AI system for segmenting and measuring key spinal structures in MRI scans, focusing on intervertebral disc height and spinal canal anteroposterior (AP) diameter in the cervical, lumbar, and thoracic regions. The goal is to reduce clinician workload, enhance diagnostic consistency, and improve assessments. Methods: The AI model leverages deep learning architectures, including UNet, nnU-Net, and CNNs. Trained on a large proprietary MRI dataset, it was validated against expert annotations. Performance was evaluated using Dice coefficients and segmentation accuracy. Results: The AI model achieved Dice coefficients of 0.94 for lumbar, 0.91 for cervical, and 0.90 for dorsal spine segmentation (D1-D12). It precisely measured spinal parameters like disc height and canal diameter, demonstrating robustness and clinical applicability. Conclusion: The AI system effectively automates MRI-based spinal measurements, improving accuracy and reducing clinician workload. Its consistent performance across spinal regions supports clinical decision-making, particularly in high-demand settings, enhancing spinal assessments and patient outcomes.

Bargava Subramanian, Naveen Kumarasami, Praveen Shastry et al.

Study Design: This study presents the development of an autonomous AI system for MRI spine pathology detection, trained on a dataset of 2 million MRI spine scans sourced from diverse healthcare facilities across India. The AI system integrates advanced architectures, including Vision Transformers, U-Net with cross-attention, MedSAM, and Cascade R-CNN, enabling comprehensive classification, segmentation, and detection of 43 distinct spinal pathologies. The dataset is balanced across age groups, genders, and scanner manufacturers to ensure robustness and adaptability. Subgroup analyses were conducted to validate the model's performance across different patient demographics, imaging conditions, and equipment types. Performance: The AI system achieved up to 97.9 percent multi-pathology detection, demonstrating consistent performance across age, gender, and manufacturer subgroups. The normal vs. abnormal classification achieved 98.0 percent accuracy, and the system was deployed across 13 major healthcare enterprises in India, encompassing diagnostic centers, large hospitals, and government facilities. During deployment, it processed approximately 100,000 plus MRI spine scans, leading to reduced reporting times and increased diagnostic efficiency by automating the identification of common spinal conditions. Conclusion: The AI system's high precision and recall validate its capability as a reliable tool for autonomous normal/abnormal classification, pathology segmentation, and detection. Its scalability and adaptability address critical diagnostic gaps, optimize radiology workflows, and improve patient care across varied healthcare environments in India.