Cervical Spinal Cord Atrophy can be Accurately Quantified Using Head Images

Area of Science:

• Neuroimaging
• Radiology
• Neurology

Background:

• Spinal cord atrophy is a key metric for monitoring Multiple Sclerosis (MS).
• Spinal cord MRI is less frequent than brain MRI due to artifacts and scan time.
• Brain MRI is routinely performed in clinical practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• Validate spinal cord cross-sectional area measurements from routine 3DT1 whole-brain MRI.
• Compare measurements from brain MRI with dedicated spinal cord MRI in healthy controls and MS patients.

Main Methods:

• Calculated cross-sectional area at C1 and C2/3 levels using both spinal cord (T2*-weighted) and brain (3DT1) MRI.
• Analyzed data from 28 healthy controls and 73 individuals with MS.
• Assessed correlations between different measurement points and imaging types.

Main Results:

• Strong correlations were found between C1 and C2/3 spinal cord measurements in both controls (r=0.94) and MS patients (r=0.85).
• Excellent agreement was observed between C1 measurements from brain MRI and C2/3 from spinal cord MRI in controls (r=0.84) and MS patients (r=0.81).

Conclusions:

• C1 cross-sectional area from brain imaging serves as a reliable surrogate for the traditional C2/3 spinal cord atrophy measure.
• Routine brain MRI can be utilized for assessing spinal cord atrophy in MS, enhancing clinical monitoring.
• This approach simplifies the process of tracking disease progression and treatment response in MS.