Conventional cervical cord MRI and diffusion tensor imaging in neuromyelitis optica

Abstract：Objective To explore the clinical application value of conventional cervical spinal cord MRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in patients with optic neuromyelitis (NMO).Methods Conventional and axial DTI of the cervical spinal cord were performed in 20 patients with NMO and 20 sex-and age-matched healthy controls .Fractional anisotropy ( FA) and mean dif-fusivity ( MD) were measured in the spinal cord at the C 2~C5 level.Regions of interest ( ROIs) were placed in the anterior , lat-eral, posterior white matter of spinal cord and the central grey matter of spinal cord .Results The locations of spinal cord lesions in patients with NMO were merely in the cervical cord (20%), or simply in the thoracic cord (5%), or both (75%).Compared with healthy controls, the values of FA were decreased in bilateral anterior , lateral, posterior cord, grey matter and MD were in-creased in bilateral lateral and posterior cord , gray matter in NMO group , there were significant differences among them ( P <0.05 ) .Conclusion Conventional cervical cord MRI is helpful to detect the lesion and confirm the position of it , DTI can detect the abnormal diffusion metrics changes quantitatively ,provide important information for early clinical diagnosis .