Allan R. Martin1, Benjamin De Leener2, Izabela Aleksanderek1, Julien Cohen-Adad2, David W. Cadotte1, Sukhvinder Kalsi-Ryan1, Lindsay Tetreault1, Adrian Crawley3, Howard Ginsberg1, David J. Mikulis3, and Michael G. Fehlings1
1Neurosurgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2Electrical Engineering, Polytechnique Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada, 3Medical Imaging, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
This study investigates if DTI, MT, and T2*-weighted
imaging of the rostral cervical cord can 1) detect injury of WM tracts, 2) correlate
with global and focal disability, and 3) predict outcomes in degenerative
cervical myelopathy (DCM). Data includes detailed clinical assessments,
electrophysiology, and MRI, repeated at 1-year. Quantitative MRI in 37 DCM patients
and 29 healthy controls provided reliable results and showed decreased CSA, FA,
and MTR, and increased T2* WM/GM ratio. FA of individual tracts correlates well
with clinical measures. Quantitative multimodal assessment of WM injury with a
clinically feasible protocol is possible, with many potential clinical
applications.
