Dimitrios C. Karampinos1, Gerd Melkus1, Timothy M. Shepherd1, Suchandrima Banerjee2, Emine U. Saritas3, Ajit Shankaranarayanan2, Chistopher P. Hess1, Thomas M. Link1, William P. Dillon1, Sharmila Majumdar1
1Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States; 2Global Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Menlo Park, CA, United States; 3Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States
T2 mapping and diffusion tensor imaging may quantitate inflammatory changes to lumbar nerve roots affected by degenerative spine disease. However, imaging spinal nerve roots accurately is difficult due to their small caliber and oblique course in all three planes. We describe initial success using a reduced-FOV single-shot spin-echo EPI acquisition to obtain T2 mapping and DTI of the bilateral lumbar nerve roots at the L4 level for healthy volunteers.