MR imaging in the diagnosis of intramedullary spinal cord diseases that involve specific neural pathways or vascular territories

Prior to the advent of MR imaging, the internal architecture of the spinal cord could not be directly imaged. The solution of many technical problems (e.g., respiratory motion, cardiac and CSF pulsation, inadequate spatial resolution) has provided the opportunity for an increasingly refined analysis of intramedullary lesions. This article begins with a brief review of the results of high-resolution MR imaging studies of the cadaveric spinal cord. The article then focuses on MR imaging in the diagnosis of intramedullary diseases that involve specific neural pathways or vascular territories. Lesions are categorized as degenerative, inflammatory, traumatic, or ischemic. These diseases generally have distinctive clinical findings that reflect dysfunction of particular ascending sensory tracts or descending motor tracts. The corresponding abnormalities on MR images reflect the pathologic changes that occur in the affected neural pathways. Knowledge of the appearance of these diseases on MR images allows the formation of a narrow differential diagnosis and, in many cases, the confident exclusion of neoplasm as the cause of myelopathy.