Spinal Cord Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and 1H-MR Spectroscopy (MRS) at 1.5T and 3T.

Virginie Callot¹, Yann Le Fur¹, Jean-Philippe Ranjeva¹, Guillaume Duhamel¹, Patrick J. Cozzone¹

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and single-voxel 1H-MR spectroscopy (MRS) of the spinal cord (SC) are challenged by several difficulties, including strong magnetic field inhomogeneities, respiratory and cardiac movements, and small size of the spinal cord. Whereas several studies have shown promising results, there is scant literature comparing 1.5T and 3T MRI and MRS. In this abstract, we investigate the efficiency of the available manufacturer MRS and DTI sequences, in terms of image/spectra quality and metrics, at both 1.5T and 3T, for different spinal cord locations (thoracic and cervical levels) and for different imaging plane orientations (sagittal and axial).