Diffusional Kurtosis Imaging (DKI) in the Normal Cervical Spinal Cord at 3 T : Baseline Values and Diffusion Metric Correlations

Eric Edward Sigmund¹, Maxim Bester^1,2, Ali Tabesh¹, Matilde Inglese¹, Joseph A. Helpern¹

The microstructural sensitivity of diffusion-weighted imaging is a powerful diagnostic in degenerative spinal cord (SC) disorders, and its specificity to different pathologies can be amplified with advanced protocols that exceed the Gaussian diffusion approximation. To that end, this study presents diffusional kurtosis imaging in the cervical spinal cord of healthy control subjects at 3 T. A set of diffusion tensor (MD, FA, D_axial,D_radial) and kurtosis tensor (MK, K_axial,K_radial) metrics are derived. Diffusion and kurtosis metrics are observed to inversely correlate (e.g. low radial diffusion with high radial kurtosis), which is discussed in the context of SC microstructure.