Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) caused by demyelinating disorders can be severely disabling. Understanding the correlates of advanced spinal cord imaging with the pathology in these lesions will be advanced by new imaging protocols and specialized coils for Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). Our objectives are to demonstrate that advanced evaluation of the spinal cord for demyelinating diseases including multiple sclerosis (MS) and acute partial transverse myelitis (ATM) with DTI will result in better understanding of the disease pathology, prognosis and treatment efficacy.
Specific aims are as follows:
Aim 1 : Establish a protocol for high-resolution DTI of cervical cord at 3T. Hypothesis i) DTI/QSI measurements of the cervical cord with(1.0~1.5 mm)3 spatial resolution can be obtained consistently with less than 10 % intra-subject variance. Tasks: a) Perform study to establish DTI protocol. b) Investigate the intra-subject variation to study repeatability of the measurements.
Aim 2 : Statistically quantify the variance of a population of normal volunteers and establish a normative database of high resolution diffusion imaging in the cervical spinal cord. Hypothesis ii) Reliable diffusion MRI protocol will give diffusion measurements (FA, ;//, ;r, xrms) from the cervical cord with less than 10 % inter-subject variance. Tasks: (a) Apply the imaging protocol to a population of normal volunteers to collect a normative database. (b). Establish statistical property limits of th normal data.
Aim 3 : Test whether high resolution DTI provides increased diagnostic information about MS lesions in the cervical spinal cord. Hypothesis iii.a) High resolution diffusion measurements with reduced intra- and inter- subject variation will be more sensitive to ATM and MS induced cervical spinal cord injury than conventional imaging. Hypothesis iii.b) Serial study of high resolution diffusion measurements in MS and ATM patients with acute cord lesions will provide measures that correlate with clinical course. Tasks: (a) Determine the added information value of high-resolution DTI relative to conventional imaging of ATM in the cervical spinal cord, (b) Determine the evolution of abnormalities by high-resolution DTI in a longitudinal study of ATM & MS patients.
Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) caused by demyelinating disorders can be severely disabling. Understanding the correlates of advanced spinal cord imaging with the pathology in these lesions will be advanced by new imaging protocols and specialized coils for Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI). Our objectives are to demonstrate that advanced evaluation of the spinal cord for demyelinating diseases including multiple sclerosis (MS) and acute partial transverse myelitis (ATM) with DTI will result in better understanding of the disease pathology, prognosis and treatment efficacy.
