Abstract #1086

Rapid Estimation of Spinal Cord Injury Severity in Rats using Double Diffusion Encoded Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy

Nathan P Skinner^1,2,3, Shekar N Kurpad^3,4, Brian D Schmit⁵, L Tugan Muftuler³, and Matthew D Budde^3,4

¹Biophysics Graduate Program, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States, ²Medical Scientist Training Program, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States, ³Department of Neurosurgery, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States, ⁴Clement J. Zablocki Veteran's Affairs Medical Center, Milwaukee, WI, United States, ⁵Department of Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, United States

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is frequently applied to spinal cord injury, yet suffers from poor detection of axonal integrity changes caused by conflicting extracellular processes. A double diffusion encoding (DDE) sequence was developed for the spinal cord to remove non-neuronal signal contribution by applying a strong diffusion weighting perpendicular to the spinal cord. A parallel diffusion gradient then sampled diffusivity along the spinal cord. Application in a rat model showed DDE parameters outperformed DTI in sensitivity to injury severity with substantially reduced acquisition and post-processing time. Thus, this technique shows potential for rapid, sensitive determination of spinal cord injury severity.

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