Cervical spondylosis: Evaluation of microstructural changes in spinal cord white matter and gray matter by diffusional kurtosis imaging

Abstract

MK values in the spinal cord may reflect microstructural changes and gray matter damage and can potentially provide more information beyond that obtained with conventional diffusion metrics.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging in a Large Longitudinal Series of Patients With Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy Correlated With Long-Term Functional Outcome

“…7 Both of these modalities, however, provide only qualitative data. To date, there has been no quantifiable radiological method of assessing the microstructural damage in the cord, especially in chronic cases, [8][9][10] or providing a patient with an expected postsurgical recovery prognosis.…”

Diffusion MRI of the spinal cord: from structural studies to pathology

“…Therefore, the acquisition of such data sets requires longer scan times than DTI, making these approaches even more difficult to use on the SC in vivo. Despite this, in recent years, the feasibility of performing many of these advanced diffusion MRI experiments in vivo on SCs in animals and even in human subjects has been demonstrated (see, for example, (63,66,67,(108)(109)(110)(111)(112)(113)147,148,150,151,165). In fact a glimpse of what can be anticipated in the future from in vivo diffusion MRI of the SC in human is presented in a recent study, which used AxCaliber to map SC microstructure using optimized hardware and software (113).…”

Classifying Cervical Spondylosis Based on Fuzzy Calculation

“…Film distance is 110 cm. Together with lumbar spondylosis, cervical degenerative disease is one of the most common problems seen by medical care personnel [12]. It is important to observe hook vertebral joints, intervertebral disc, intervertebral foramen, and intervertebral facet joints.…”

“…Currently, the clinical diagnostic methods [8][9][10] of CS technology include the clinical examination, spinal angiography, vertebral artery angiography, X-ray, computed tomography (CT), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). For the time being, X-ray inspection results in the basic-level hospitals of China about the diagnosis of CS are still given priority because X-ray is the most cost-effective imaging modality for the diagnosis of CS due to its low costs, radiation dose, and flexibility of being able to image spine in different poses (standing, flexion, extension, bending, or torsion), while MRI (e.g., T2-weighted imaging) evaluating pathological changes in the disease is of limited use due to the weak correlation between the MR findings and clinical symptoms [11][12][13]. So the X-ray radiographs of CS are still very important and necessary.…”