Diffusion Tensor-Based Fiber Tracking in Cervical Spinal Cord with a 3T MRI

The protocol for spinal DTI and tractography with high SNR and spatial resolution has been developed and tested on 6 healthy subjects and 1 CSM patient in a 3T system. Fiber bundles were traced and were found running parallel to the cervical spinal cord correlating with the neuronal anatomy in normal subjects. The FA maps showed consistent low FA region connecting all spinal levels, which corresponded to the grey matter structure in anatomical imaging. Spinal DTI in CSM showed diffusivity increase at compression sites. The proposed diffusion eigenvector-based method was able to differentiate between lambdaa and lambdar even when there was a drastic diffusivity change at compressed regions in CSM, which may facilitate better understanding of the pathophysiology of CSM. Our results indicated that using the current imaging and post-processing protocols, spinal DTI can be achieved with better grey/white matter contrast, high inter-subject reproducibility and diagnostic ability