title: Rapid, postmortem 9.4 T MRI of spinal cord injury: correlation with histology and survival times.
abstract: High field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been increasingly used to assess experimental spinal cord injury (SCI). In the present investigation, after partial spinal cord injury and excision of the whole spine, pathological changes of the spinal cord were studied in spinal cord-spine blocks, from the acute to the chronic state (24 h to 5 months). Using proton density (PD) weighted imaging parameters at a magnetic field strength of 9.4 tesla (T), acquisition times ranging from <1 to 10 h per specimen were used. High in-plane pixel resolution (68 and 38 microm, respectively) was obtained, as well as high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which is important for optimal contrast settings. The quality of the resulting MR images was demonstrated by comparison with histology. The cord and the lesion were shown in their anatomical surroundings, detecting cord swelling in the acute phase (24 h to 1 week) and cord atrophy at the chronic stage. Haemorrhage was detected as hypo-intense signal. Oedema, necrosis and scarring were hyper-intense but could not be distinguished. Histology confirmed that the anatomical delimitation of the lesion extent by MRI was precise, both with high and moderate resolution. The present investigation thus demonstrates the precision of spinal cord MRI at different survival delays after compressive partial SCI and establishes efficient imaging parameters for postmortem PD MRI.
authors: Centre for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology (CNCM), Department of Neuroanatomy, University of Liège, Sart Tilman B36, 4000 Liège, Belgium. Felix.Scholtes@ulg.ac.be
authors: Felix
authors: F
authors: Scholtes
authors: Rémy
authors: R
authors: Phan-Ba
authors: Evi
authors: E
authors: Theunissen
authors: Peter
authors: P
authors: Adriaensens
authors: Gary
authors: G
authors: Brook
authors: Rachelle
authors: R
authors: Franzen
authors: Delphine
authors: D
authors: Bouhy
authors: Jan
authors: J
authors: Gelan
authors: Didier
authors: D
authors: Martin
authors: Jean
authors: J
authors: Schoenen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D013119:Spinal Cord Injuries / Q000473:pathology*; D013995:Time