Cerebral MRI in a prospective cohort study on depression and atherosclerosis: the BiDirect sample, processing pipelines, and analysis tools.

Background: The use of cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in observational studies has increased exponentially in recent years, making it critical to provide details about the study sample, image processing, and extracted imaging markers to validate and replicate study results. This article reviews the cerebral MRI dataset from the now-completed BiDirect cohort study, as an update and extension of the feasibility report published after the first two examination time points.

Methods: We report the sample and flow of participants spanning four study sessions and twelve years.