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Abstract #5023

Quantifying Blood Flow of Rat Spinal Cord Injury Using in vivo Flow-sensitive Alternating Inversion Recovery (FAIR)

Seongtaek Lee1, Natasha Wilkins2, Brian Schmit1, Shekar Kurpad3,4, and Matthew Budde3,4

1Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University & Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States, 2Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States, 3Neurosurgery, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, United States, 4Clement J. Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Milwaukee, WI, United States

Perfusion weighted MRI has been widely used as a non-invasive MR biomarker in brain imaging but its application to spinal cord imaging has been limited due to the inherent difficulties. In this study, we evaluated flow-sensitive alternating inversion recovery to quantify spinal cord blood flow (SCBF) in rat spinal cord with varying severities of contusion injury. A trend of decreasing SCBF was observed with greater injury severity, suggesting that arterial spin labeling may be useful as a reliable non-invasive indicator of spinal cord traumatic injury. Furthermore, T1 values demonstrated greater sensitivity to injury severity and functional outcomes.

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