Abstract #3429

Diffusion Tensor Imaging of the Cervical and Thoracic Spinal Cord in Pediatric Subjects using an inner FOV 2D RF pulse sequence.

Sona Saksena¹, Devon M Middleton², Laura Krisa³, Pallav Shah², Scott H Faro², Rebecca Sinko³, John Gaughan⁴, Jürgen Finsterbusch⁵, M J Mulcahey³, and Feroze B Mohamed¹

¹Department of Radiology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ²Department of Radiology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ³Department of Occupational Therapy, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ⁴Biostatistics Consulting Center, Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ⁵Department of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany

This is the first study in pediatric subjects investigating the DTI values and it’s reproducibility along the entire cervical and thoracic spinal cord (SC). DTI data was acquired from 22 typically developing (TD) children and 15 patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) using an inner field-of-view DTI sequence. Regions of interest were manually drawn on whole cord at every axial slice along the cervical and thoracic SC. Fractional anisotropy and radial diffusivity values were significantly different between TD and SCI suggesting that these appear to be the most sensitive parameter in assessing the state of SC in chronic phase of SCI. This study demonstrates that DTI has a potential to be used as an imaging biomarker for evaluating the extent of injury, which may be useful to prognosticate as well as monitor patients with SCI

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