The spinal cord is a main pathway connecting the brain to the peripheral nervous system. Noninvasive image?based assessment of this structure is an increasingly demanding healthcare service. This project cultivates the engineering techniques required for the development of a computer?aided spinal?scan assessment software toolkit for diagnosis of spinal cord problems. In particular, this project designs computational methods to automatically extract image features, such as structure sizes, location and intensity, thereby enabling the diagnosis of spinal cord disorders in an efficient, reproducible, non?invasive and accurate manner. This project is a pioneering attempt on developing a computer?aided spinal?scan assessment method. In both industries and academia, there are limited prior works investigating the possibility of developing a computer?aided, semi?automatic assessment method for spinal cord diagnosis. This project will deliver the mathematical models and research prototypes, towards the development of spinal cord assessment software products to the industrial collaborator.