Journal
PLOS ONE
Volume 11, Issue 10, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0164890
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Funding
- U.K Multiple Sclerosis Society
- National Institute for Health Research University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre
- NIHR BRC UCLH/UCL High Impact Initiative
- EPSRC [EP/H046410/1, EP/J020990/1, EP/K005278]
- MRC [MR/J01107X/1]
- NIHR Biomedical Research Unit (Dementia) at UCL
- NIHR BRC UCLH/UCL
- National Institute for Health Research University College London Hospitals Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR BRC UCLH/UCL)
- NIHR BRC UCLH/UCL High Impact Initiative [BW.mn.BRC10269]
- EPSRC [EP/H046410/1, EP/J020990/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- MRC [MR/J01107X/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/H046410/1, EP/J020990/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- Medical Research Council [MR/J01107X/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- National Institute for Health Research [NF-SI-0508-10058] Funding Source: researchfish
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Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has recently started to be adopted into clinical investigations of spinal cord (SC) diseases. However, DTI applications to the lower SC are limited due to a number of technical challenges, related mainly to the even smaller size of the SC structure at this level, its position relative to the receiver coil elements and the effects of motion during data acquisition. Developing methods to overcome these problems would offer new means to gain further insights into microstructural changes of neurological conditions involving the lower SC, and in turn could help explain symptoms such as bladder and sexual dysfunction. In this work, the feasibility of obtaining grey and white matter (GM/WM) DTI indices such as axial/radial/mean diffusivity (AD/RD/MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) within the lumbosacral enlargement (LSE) was investigated using a reduced field-of-view (rFOV) single-shot echo-planar imaging (ss-EPI) acquisition in 14 healthy participants using a clinical 3T MR system. The scan-rescan reproducibility of the measurements was assessed by calculating the percentage coefficient of variation (% COV). Mean FA was higher in WM compared to GM (0.58 and 0.4 in WM and GM respectively), AD and MD were higher in WM compared to GM (1.66 mu m(2) ms(-1) and 0.94 mu m(2) ms(-1) in WM and 1.2 mu m(2) ms(-1) and 0.82 mu m(2) ms(-1) in GM for AD and MD respectively) and RD was lower in WM compared to GM (0.58 mu m(2) ms(-1) and 0.63 mu m(2) ms(-1) respectively). The scan-rescan % COV was lower than 10% in all cases with the highest values observed for FA and the lowest for MD. This pilot study demonstrates that it is possible to obtain reliable tissue-specific estimation of DTI indices within the LSE using a rFOV ss-EPI acquisition. The DTI acquisition and analysis protocol presented here is clinically feasible and may be used in future investigations of neurological conditions implicating the lower SC.
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