THE ROLE OF DIFFUSION TENSOR IMAGING (DTI) IN SPINAL CORD PATHOLOGY

Abstract

Background: Many patients complain from sensory deficient secondary to different causes, although the magnetic resonance (MR) shows the mass effect or changes of spinal cord yet it is still limited in predicting symptoms everity as patients may have a varying tolerance of spinal cord compression. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) shows could predict degree of spinal cord affection even with mild lesions. Aim of the work: is to show the role of Diffusion tensor imaging(DTI) in proved different cervical or dorsal spinal lesions by conventional MRI. Patients and Method: The study included 16 patients divided into 6 patients complaining from compressive disc lesions with sensory deficient,2 patients with neoplasm complain from newly developed sensory deficient patients with and 8 patients complaining frominternal spinal cord lesions in the form of single spinal multiple sclerosis (MS) plaque. All cases are considered as self control by measuring two controls above and below lesion. Results: High statistically significant difference of fractionalanisotropy (FA) between lesion and control with statistically significant difference of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) between lesion and control (Mann-Whiteny Test p value < 0.05), resultant cut off value is 0.333 which gives higher specificity and sensitivity with efficacy 87.5%. Conclusion: the resulted values of newly designed protocol givefunctional and numerical marker by which the diagnosis and prognosis will be more suitable.