Abstract #4299

Evidence of Wallerian Degeneration in the Human Spinal Cord using In Vivo High-Resolution DTI & Magnetization Transfer

Julien Cohen-Adad^1,2, Bradley Buchbinder^2,3, Lawrence L. Wald^1,4, Anne Louise Oaklander^2,3

¹A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; ²Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; ³Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; ⁴Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States

We combined high resolution diffusion-weighted, magnetization transfer and conventional MRI of the spinal cord in a patient with focal cervical cord injury (SCI). Concomitant analysis of images suggested anterograde Wallerian degeneration in the dorsal left pathway. The correlation between DW and MT measurements and the neurological abnormalities provides incentive to perform multi-parametric spinal MRI to better distinguish demyelination and degeneration after SCI.