Abstract #4402

Reduced Field-of-View Diffusion-Weighted Imaging of the Lumbosacral Enlargement: A Pilot In Vivo study of the healthy spinal cord using a clinical 3T MR system

Marios C Yiannakas¹, Polymnia Louka¹, Francesco Grussu¹, Ferran Prados^1,2, Rebecca S Samson¹, Marco Battiston¹, Sebastien Ourselin², David H Miller^1,3, and Claudia Angela Michela Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott^1,4

¹NMR Research Unit, Queen Square MS Centre, Department of Neuroinflammation, UCL Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ²Translational Imaging Group, Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ³NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, UCL-UCLH, London, United Kingdom, ⁴Brain Connectivity Center, C. Mondino National Neurological Institute, Pavia, Italy

The use of imaging methods to study the lower spinal cord has been hindered by a number of technical challenges; hence the relative contribution of pathology affecting the lower spinal cord to the observed clinical symptoms remains largely unexplored. In this pilot study, we investigate the feasibility of obtaining tissue-specific (grey matter and white matter) diffusion tensor imaging metrics within the lumbosacral enlargement in vivo in healthy volunteers using reduced field-of-view echo planar imaging on a clinical 3T MRI system. Preliminary results show that such measures may be obtained reliably and within clinically acceptable scan times.

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