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Updated: Apr 9, 2026
Diffusion Imaging in the Rat Cervical Spinal Cord
Published on: April 7, 2015
Severity of spinal cord injury influences diffusion tensor imaging of the brain
Michael B Jirjis1, Aditya Vedantam2, Matthew D Budde2
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
Background:
The purpose of this study was to determine whether DTI changes in the brain induced by a thoracic spinal cord injury are sensitive to varying severity of spinal contusion in rats.
Methods:
A control, mild, moderate, or severe contusion injury was administered over the eighth thoracic vertebral level in 32 Sprague-Dawley rats. At 11 weeks postinjury, ex vivo DTI of the brain was performed on a 9.4T Bruker scanner using a pulsed gradient spin-echo sequence.
Results:
Mean water diffusion in the internal capsule regions of the brain and pyramid locations of the brainstem were correlated with motor function (r(2) = 0.55). Additionally, there were significant differences between injury severity groups for mean diffusivity and fractional anisotropy at regions associated with the corticospinal tract (P = 0.05).
Conclusion:
These results indicate that DTI is sensitive to changes in brain tissue as a consequence of thoracic SCI.
