Ehud J. Schmidt1, Ajit Shankaranarayanan2,
Sylvain Jaume, 1,3, Giovanna Danagoulian1, Srinivasan
Jr. Mukundan1, Krishna S. Nayak4
1Radiology, Brigham and Womens
Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; 2GE Healthcare Applied
Science Lab, Menlo Park, CA, United States; 3Computer Science and
Artificial Intelligence Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Cambridge, MA, United States; 4Electrical Engineering, University
of Southern California
3D
High-resolution Wide-band Steady State Free Precession (WBSSFP) is utilized
to track nerves as they exit the spinal cord. By placing the readout
direction in the Superior-Inferior direction, small diffusional effects
(B=40-60 s/mm2) contribute to improved contrast between Cerebro-spinal-fluid
or Fat and the nerves, and remove vessel signal. In six patients with
degenerative spine disease, WBSSFP aided in the diagnosis of back-pain
sources, by detecting impingement on the nerves outside the spinal dura, not
easily detected with conventional T2-,T1- or T2*-weighted sequences.
Keywords