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Updated: Jul 8, 2025
Author Spotlight: Using the MouseWalker to Quantify Locomotor Dysfunction in a Mouse Model of Spinal Cord Injury
Published on: March 24, 2023
Model-based parcellation of diffusion MRI of injured spinal cord predicts hand use impairment and recovery in
Isaac V Manzanera Esteve1, Feng Wang2, Jamie L Reed2
1Department of Plastic Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA; Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA.
Abstract:
A mathematical model-based parcellation of magnetic resonance diffusion tensor images (DTI) has been developed to quantify progressive changes in three types of tissues - grey (GM), white matter (WM), and damaged spinal cord tissue, along with behavioral assessments over a 6 month period following targeted spinal cord injuries (SCI) in monkeys. Sigmoid Gompertz function based fittings of DTI metrics provide early indicators that correlate with, and predict, recovery of hand grasping behavior. Our three tissue pool model provided unbiased, data-driven segmentation of spinal cord images and identified DTI metrics that can serve as reliable biomarkers of severity of spinal cord injuries and predictors of behavioral outcomes.
