Diagnostic Accuracy of Diffusion Tensor Imaging for Pediatric Cervical Spinal Cord Injury

Nadia Barakat¹, MJ Mulcahey², John Gaughan¹, Pallav Shah¹, Scott Faro¹, Amer Samdani², Randal Betz², Jrgen Finsterbusch³, Feroze Mohamed¹

Few studies have evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) for spinal cord injury (SCI) but none have involved children. In this study the predictive validity of DTI was evaluated by examining its diagnostic accuracy for pediatric cervical SCI in 35 children. The specificity, sensitivity, receiver operating characteristics area under the curve (ROC AUC) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) of DTI for the ISNCSCI clinical endpoints and MRI level of injury were calculated. Resampling methods were used to validate the estimates from the final models.