More articles from Spine

The authors sought to determine whether the L5 vertebra could be accurately localized by using nerve morphology on MR imaging. A sample of 108 cases with full spine MR imaging were numbered from the C2 vertebral body to the sacrum. The reference standard of numbering by full spine imaging was compared with the nerve morphology numbering method with 5 blinded raters. The percentage of perfect agreement with the reference standard was 98.1%, which was preserved in transitional and numeric variation states. The iliolumbar ligament localization method showed 83.3% perfect agreement with the reference standard.