Perfusion MRI of the Human Cervical Spinal Cord Using Arterial Spin Labeling

Olivier M. Girard¹, Virginie Callot², Benjamin Robert³, Patrick J. Cozzone⁴, Guillaume Duhamel²

Spinal cord (SC) perfusion is involved in post-traumatic recovery processes and is responsible for secondary injuries, hence it is a critical function to assess and monitor in order to establish correct diagnosis and prognosis of SC injured patients. Preliminary results have been obtained recently, demonstrating the feasibility of Arterial Spin Labeling perfusion imaging on human SC. This report rizes recent advances in this field. Although the presented methods require more reliability, this work should pave the way to future developments leading to robust SC perfusion measurements, hence providing a valuable clinical tool for SC disease characterization.