Multi-compartmental diffusion characterization of the human cervical spinal cord in vivo using the spherical mean technique.
NMR Biomed
; 31(4): e3894, 2018 04.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-29388719
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this work was to evaluate the feasibility and reproducibility of the spherical mean technique (SMT), a multi-compartmental diffusion model, in the spinal cord of healthy controls, and to assess its ability to improve spinal cord characterization in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients at 3 T. SMT was applied in the cervical spinal cord of eight controls and six relapsing-remitting MS patients. SMT provides an elegant framework to model the apparent axonal volume fraction vax , intrinsic diffusivity Dax , and extra-axonal transverse diffusivity Dex_perp (which is estimated as a function of vax and Dax ) without confounds related to complex fiber orientation distribution that reside in diffusion MRI modeling. SMT's reproducibility was assessed with two different scans within a month, and SMT-derived indices in healthy and MS cohorts were compared. The influence of acquisition scheme on SMT was also evaluated. SMT's vax , Dax , and Dex_perp measurements all showed high reproducibility. A decrease in vax was observed at the site of lesions and normal appearing white matter (p < 0.05), and trends towards a decreased Dax and increased Dex_perp were seen. Importantly, a twofold reduction in acquisition yielded similarly high accuracy with SMT. SMT provides a fast, reproducible, and accurate method to improve characterization of the cervical spinal cord, and may have clinical potential for MS patients.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Imagem de Difusão por Ressonância Magnética
/
Medula Cervical
Tipo de estudo:
Etiology_studies
/
Incidence_studies
/
Observational_studies
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Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limite:
Adult
/
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
NMR Biomed
Assunto da revista:
DIAGNOSTICO POR IMAGEM
/
MEDICINA NUCLEAR
Ano de publicação:
2018
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Estados Unidos