Perfusion Imaging of the Human Cervical Spinal Cord

Govind Nair¹, Xiaoping P. Hu¹

Perfusion imaging of the cervical cord, while challenging due to anatomical constraints and pattern of blood flow, may prove to be valuable in diagnosing and evaluating pathologies like ischemia, tumor and neurodegeneration. In this study, perfusion imaging of the cervical enlargement was performed on healthy human subjects using pulsed ASL technique with varying inversion times. We estimate an arterial transit time of 2s and observed the peak perfusion signal at 4s from the inversion pulse. The quantitative spinal cord perfusion rate was determined to be 2611 ml/100g/min, which was lower than those in the brain.