Synopsis: Prior adult studies have shown that DTI allows for noninvasive assessment of the severity of spinal cord injury (SCI). The aim of this study was to determine whether DTI at sites cephalad and caudal to the injury provides measures of injury severity in pediatric subjects with chronic SCI and compared these data with normative DTI data of typically developing subjects. ROIs were drawn on whole cord and spinal cord white matter (WM) areas: ventral, dorsal, and both right and left lateral regions along the entire cervical and thoracic SC. For each SCI subject, DTI parameters for each WM region were measured at the levels cephalad and caudal relative to MR injury. We demonstrated changes in FA and AD in WM regions at levels both cephalad and caudal to the injury site. This suggests that FA and AD has the potential to be sensitive marker of true extent of cord injury and might be useful in detecting remote injuries.
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