Abstract #0847

Combining biomechanical finite element analysis and multi-parametric MRI to assess mechanical and structural damage in cervical spondylotic myelopathy

Manuel Taso^1,2,3,4, Pierre-Jean Arnoux^2,4, Léo Fradet^4,5, Arnaud Le Troter^1,3, Jean-Philippe Ranjeva^1,3,4, Kathia Chaumoître^4,6, Pierre-Hugues Roche^4,7, and Virginie Callot^1,3,4

¹CRMBM UMR 7339, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Marseille, France, ²LBA UMR T 24, Aix-Marseille Université, IFSTTAR, Marseille, France, ³CEMEREM, AP-HM, Pôle d'imagerie médicale, Marseille, France, ⁴iLab-Spine international associate laboratory, Marseille/Montréal, France, ⁵Mechanical Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada, ⁶Service de Radiologie, Hôpital Nord, AP-HM, Pôle d'imagerie médicale, Marseille, France, ⁷Service de Neurochirurgie, Hôpital Nord, AP-HM, Trauma Center, Marseille, France

While diagnosis of cervical spondylotic myelopathy is easily done with MRI, patient outcome is still difficult to predict. It is nonetheless associated to a strong mechanical cause as spinal cord’s (SC) compression is the first event leading to tissue alterations and neurological deficits. This work proposes an original approach using biomechanical numerical simulation, to apprehend the mechanisms of SC compression by the disk, and multi-parametric MRI, to probe the consequent microstructural alterations (axonal loss, demyelination …). Thanks to spatial normalization, first results on 3 patients are presented, allowing co-localization of personalized simulation of mechanical stress and structural MR alterations.

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