Regional and structural integrity of the whole cervical spinal cord using 3D-T1 MP2RAGE and multi-slice multi angle DTI and ihMT sequences at 3T: preliminary investigations on age-related changes.

In this study, we present a 3T multi-parametric MR protocol allowing structural and diffuse evaluation of the whole cervical spinal cord (SC), within a clinically acceptable scan-time. The MRI protocol includes high-resolution anatomical T2*-weighted images allowing WM/GM atrophy evaluation, a MP2RAGE sequence allowing T1-mapping, a Multi-Slice Multi-Angle (MSMA) DTI sequence allowing evaluation of tissue structural organization and, last but not least, a MSMA inhomogeneous Magnetization transfer (ihMT) sequence allowing myelin-content evaluation in whole cervical SC. This protocol was combined with a template-based automated post-processing pipeline in a preliminary study investigating age- and region-related microstructural differences in specific regions along the cervical SC.