Toward a Better Description of the Gray Matter Spinal Cord by Using Highly Resolved Diffusion-Weighted and Morphologic T2*-Weighted MRI.

Virginie Callot¹, Guillaume Duhamel¹, Alexandre Vignaud², Patrick J. Cozzone¹

The detection of SC abnormalities is nowadays based on MRI with conventional anatomic spin-echo or gradient-echo sequences. Diffusion MRI is additionally used to assess the structural integrity of the spinal cord. However the resolution usually achieved for diffusion-weighted images precludes differentiating with accuracy white matter and gray matter.