Major MRI scanner upgrades can potentially introduce systematic changes in quantitative MRI metrics and affect reliability and reproducibility of quantitative parameters. Advanced diffusion weighted (DW) imaging methods are a powerful diagnostic and research tool in the brain and in spinal cord, but it is unclear to what extent DW-derived metrics can be affected by upgrades. Here we assess the effect of scanner upgrades on state-of-the-art spinal cord DW techniques. We found that diffusion matrices such as FA, MD and MK remain stable following a major upgrade when measured in the whole spinal cord, white matter, and grey matter areas.
This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.