Abstract #0447

ASIA Scores Correlate with DTI Metrics in Non-Hemorrhagic Traumatic C-Spine Injury

Rao Gullapalli^1,2, Jiachen Zhuo^1,2, Sendhil Cheran¹, K. Shanmuganathan¹, S. Mirvis¹

¹Radiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States; ²Core for Translational Research in Imaging @ Maryland (C-TRIM), University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States

There has been rising interest in evaluation spinal cord injury using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) for accurate characterization of cord injury. The purpose of our retrospective study was to determine the correlation between American Spine Injury Association (ASIA) clinical injury motor score in patients with traumatic cervical cord injury and the various DT-MRI parameters. Our results indicate that DTI parameters accurately depict the severity of the injury and correlates with the ASIA scores. Further, among non-hemorrhagic cord contusions there appears to be a strong correlation of ASIA scores with the DTI parameter.