Abstract #1613

Relaxation-compensated CEST MRI in the spinal cord of multiple sclerosis patients at 3T

Alicia E Cronin¹, Grace Sweeney¹, Logan Prock¹, Delaney Houston¹, Isabella Stuart¹, Colin D McKnight², Francesca Bagnato^3,4, Kristin P O'Grady^1,2,5, and Seth A Smith^1,2,5

¹Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ²Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ³Department of Neurology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ⁴Department of Neurology, Nashville VA Medical Center, TN Valley Healthcare System, Nashville, TN, United States, ⁵Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States

Synopsis

Keywords: Spinal Cord, Multiple Sclerosis

Motivation: Clinical MR imaging is insensitive to underlying biochemical changes that may precede inflammatory multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions. Detecting tissue changes in early disease pathology could be significant for diagnosis and prognosis.

Goal(s): Evaluate AREX (apparent exchange-dependent relaxation rate) sensitivity to alternative amide chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) methods in the spinal cord of MS patients.

Approach: 32 healthy controls and 36 MS patients were imaged, and differences between amide CEST contrasts (both uncorrected and magnetization transfer (MT) corrected) were explored.

Results: Removing MT contributions and T1-relaxation decreases the heterogeneity in the healthy spinal cord and shows variation in the cord of MS patients.

Impact: Initial results suggest that AREX shows improvement over alternative methods and could offer increased sensitivity to biochemical changes in the spinal cord of MS patients.

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