Longitudinal assessment of cervical spinal cord compartments in multiple sclerosis

•The cervical spinal cord compartments of 65 MS patients and 20 healthy controls were assessed longitudinally over 1.10±0.28 years on MRI using the novel averaged magnetization inversion recovery acquisitionssequence and in-house developed post-processing methods.•Patients with clinical progression showed faster reduction of total spinal cord areas and spinal cord white matter areas over time at the level of cSC enlargement.•MS patients with clinical disease progression demonstrate subtle signs of a more pronounced tissue loss at the level of cSC enlargement.