DTI of Spinal Cord Lesions of Varying Severity Based on MRI in the Entire Pediatric Spinal Cord

To determine whether DTI at sites cephalad and caudal to the MRI lesion provides measures of cord abnormalities in different SCI groups (n=23) compared to TD (n=36) and any correlation between the varying severity of MRI abnormality and DTI abnormalities cephalad and caudal to the MRI lesion. to the MRI lesion. The five SCI groups included; 1= SCIWORA (n=6); 2=Syringohydromyelia (n=4); 3=Atrophy+Syringomyelia (n=7); 4=Atrophy+Myelomalacia (n=3); 5=Atrophy+Hemorrhage (n=3). Groups 1 to 5 represent a progressive measure in cord abnormality. Among these SCI groups, we looked at concordant DTI correlation which is defined as the expected change in DTI metrics with increasing cord severity. SCIWORA showed DTI abnormality at segments of the cephalad and caudal cord with the caudal cord more affected consistent with the anterograde degeneration. FA showed the greatest total number of segments in the cephalad and caudal cord that showed abnormal DTI values in comparison to the other DTI metrics.