Metal artifacts from commonly-encountered spinal fusion stabilization hardware have historically confounded quantitative MRI (qMRI) research investigations of the injured and damaged spinal cord in human subjects. This report provides preliminary analysis of metal-artifact suppressed multi-spectral diffusion qMRI collected on instrumented degenerative cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) subjects. The results of the study demonstrate group trends of reduced diffusivity in the CSM group at spinal cord levels fused by hardware. This is a unique finding in instrumented CSM subjects that may offer unique insight into the impact of spinal fusion interventions on conventional qMRI measures of the spinal cord.
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