Abstract #1305

Myelin Water Imaging with MRI at 3.0T in the Healthy Human Spinal Cord: Reproducibility and Changes with Age

Erin Leigh MacMillan¹, Armin Curt^2,3, Burkhard Mdler⁴, David K. Li⁵, Marcel F. Dvorak^3,6, Alexander L. MacKay^5,7

¹Dept. of Clinical Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; ²Dept. of Neurology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; ³International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries, Vancouver, BC, Canada; ⁴Philips Healthcare, Vancouver, BC, Canada; ⁵Dept. of Radiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; ⁶Dept. of Orthopaedics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; ⁷Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Myelin water imaging (MWI) enables the measurement of the fraction of water trapped between myelin bilayers, the myelin water fraction (MWF). In this study we performed MWI in the cervical spine of healthy adults and sought to determine the scan-rescan reproducibility, as well as changes with age. In a population of adults aged 21 to 75, a negative trend of MWF with age was detected, indicating that white matter myelin content in the cervical spinal cord decreases with age.