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Reduced field-of-view diffusion-weighted imaging of the lumbosacral enlargement: a pilot in vivo study of the healthy spinal cord at 3T

Yiannakas, M; Grussu, F; Polymnia, L; Prados Carrasco, F; Samson, R; Battiston, M; Altmann, D; ... Wheeler-Kingshott, C; + view all (2016) Reduced field-of-view diffusion-weighted imaging of the lumbosacral enlargement: a pilot in vivo study of the healthy spinal cord at 3T. PLoS One , 11 (10) , Article e0164890. 10.1371/journal.pone.0164890. Green open access

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Abstract

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has recently started to be adopted into clinical investigations of spinal cord (SC) diseases. However, DTI applications to the lower SC are limited due to a number of technical challenges, related mainly to the even smaller size of the SC structure at this level, its position relative to the receiver coil elements and the effects of motion during data acquisition. Developing methods to overcome these problems would offer new means to gain further insights into microstructural changes of neurological conditions involving the lower SC, and in turn could help explain symptoms such as bladder and sexual dysfunction. In this work, the feasibility of obtaining grey and white matter (GM/WM) DTI indices such as axial/radial/mean diffusivity (AD/RD/MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) within the lumbosacral enlargement (LSE) was investigated using a reduced field-of-view (rFOV) single-shot echo-planar imaging (ss-EPI) acquisition in 14 healthy participants using a clinical 3T MR system. The scan-rescan reproducibility of the measurements was assessed by calculating the percentage coefficient of variation (%COV). Mean FA was higher in WM compared to GM (0.58 and 0.4 in WM and GM respectively), AD and MD were higher in WM compared to GM (1.66 µm2ms-1 and 0.94 µm2ms-1 in WM and 1.2 µm2ms-1 and 0.82 µm2ms-1 in GM for AD and MD respectively) and RD was lower in WM compared to GM (0.58 µm2ms-1 and 0.63 µm2ms-1 respectively). The scan-rescan %COV was lower than 10% in all cases with the highest values observed for FA and the lowest for MD. This pilot study demonstrates that it is possible to obtain reliable tissue-specific estimation of DTI indices within the LSE using a rFOV ss-EPI acquisition. The DTI acquisition and analysis protocol presented here is clinically feasible and may be used in future investigations of neurological conditions implicating the lower SC.

Type: Article
Title: Reduced field-of-view diffusion-weighted imaging of the lumbosacral enlargement: a pilot in vivo study of the healthy spinal cord at 3T
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0164890
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0164890
Language: English
Additional information: © 2016 Yiannakas et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Keywords: Magnetic resonance imaging; reduced field-of-view; lumbosacral enlargement; diffusion-weighted imaging; DTI; grey matter; white matter
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Department of Neuromuscular Diseases
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology > Neuroinflammation
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Med Phys and Biomedical Eng
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1520348
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