Abstract #2513

Assessing changes within the lumbosacral spinal cord in neurological disease: preliminary results of a pilot in vivo MRI study

Martina D Liechti^1,2, Marios Yiannakas¹, Nuttakarn Budtarad¹, Ahmed T Toosy¹, Xixi Yang^1,2, Ferran Prados³, David H Miller¹, Henry H Houlden⁴, Claudia AM Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott¹, and Jalesh N Panicker²

¹UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square MS Centre, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ²UCL Institute of Neurology, Uro-Neurology, Department of Brain Repair & Rehabilitation, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ³Translational Imaging Group, Centre for Medical Image Computing, Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ⁴UCL Institute of Neurology, Department of Molecular Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-derived tissue-specific measures of neuronal loss and demyelination were assessed at the lumbosacral level of the spinal cord (SC) in relation to neurological dysfunction. Acquisition of grey and white matter measures for the lumbosacral SC proved feasible, and were sensitive to detect tissue-specific changes in two neurological disorders commonly associated with lumbosacral cord involvement: Multiple system atrophy and Multiple sclerosis. This preliminary study demonstrates the utility of this cutting edge MRI acquisition method to detect pathological changes in the lumbosacral SC, and is a first step towards establishing new MRI biomarkers for these patient groups.

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