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Updated: Jan 12, 2026
Intraoperative Ultrasound in Spinal Surgery
Published on: August 17, 2022
Intraoperative Ultrafast Ultrasound Doppler Imaging of Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy Helps Predict Neurological
Xingyue Wei1, Qingpeng Song2, Lijie Huang1
1School of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Objectives:
The mechanism of neurological recovery after surgical decompression is still unclear for degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM). This study aims to analyze the relationship between microvasculature in the post-decompressed spinal cord segments and neurological recovery and further design a prediction model of recovery.
Methods:
This prospective cohort study analyzed data from a cohort of patients with DCM who underwent surgical decompression from May 2023 to May 2024 at a single center. Intraoperative ultrasound ultrafast Doppler imaging was performed to evaluate the microvasculature of post-decompressed spinal cord segments. Differences in 5 microvascular indexes between post-decompressed spinal cord segments and normal spinal cord segments were calculated for each participant. All participants were followed up for 1 year to obtain modified Japanese Orthopedic Association (mJOA) scores. Participants were divided into favorable and unfavorable recovery groups based on a threshold of 50% for the recovery rate of mJOA scores. The Mann-Whitney U test compared microvascular indexes between the 2 groups. Kolmogorov-Arnold Network was further introduced to predict neurological recovery based on the proposed microvascular indexes.
Results:
Forty-eight participants (median age, 59 years [IQR, 54-66 years]; 36 males) were included. Thirty-seven participants had a favorable recovery. All 5 microvascular indexes were associated with neurological recovery (all p < .05). The proposed prediction model achieves an accuracy of 94% (45 of 48) and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.98 (95% CI: 0.90, 1.00).
Conclusions:
Microvasculature of post-decompressed spinal cord segments is associated with neurological recovery and can effectively predict neurological recovery.
