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 Kurpad^3,4, and Matthew Budde^3,4

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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