Rapid in vivo detection of rat spinal cord injury with double-diffusion-encoded magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

ABSTRACT: PURPOSE:Diffusion-weighted imaging is a common experimental tool for evaluating spinal cord injury (SCI), yet it suffers from complications that decrease its clinical effectiveness. The most commonly used technique, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), is often confounded by effects of edema accompanying acute SCI, limiting its sensitivity to the important functional status marker of axonal integrity. The purpose of this study is to introduce a novel diffusion-acquisition method with the goal of overcoming these limitations. METHODS:A double diffusion encoding (DDE) pulse sequence was implemented with a diffusion-weighted filter orthogonal to the spinal cord for suppressing nonneural signals prior to diffusion weighting parallel to the cord. A point-resolved spectroscopy readout (DDE-PRESS) was used for improved sensitivity and compared with DTI in a rat model of SCI with varying injury severities. RESULTS:The DDE-PRESS parameter, restricted fraction, showed a strong relationship with injury severity (P?

SUBMITTER: Skinner NP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5285487 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature