Morphometrics of the Entire Human Spinal Cord and Spinal Canal Measured From In Vivo High-Resolution Anatomical Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Abstract

N/A.

A reliable spatially normalized template of the human spinal cord — Applications to automated white matter/gray matter segmentation and tensor-based morphometry (TBM) mapping of gray matter alterations occurring with age

“…In line, GM atrophy due to increasing age, largely reported in the brain (Agosta et al, 2007;Good et al, 2001) with either GM volume assessment or VBM, has also been studied and established in vivo in the SC with however only absolute GM area measurement (Fradet et al, 2014), i.e. with no spatial information.…”

Geometrical variations in white and gray matter affect the biomechanics of spinal cord injuries more than the arachnoid space

“…SCIs following thoracic and lumbar burst fractures were reproduced, including biofidelic viscoelastic material behavior for the WM and GM and fluidstructure interaction between the CSF and the spinal cord and canal. Levels T6 and L1 were chosen since they present a high burst fracture occurrence, 1 in addition to a distinct WM/GM geometry allowing an investigation of the effect of cross-sectional geometry at the thoracic and lumbar vertebral levels, as described in the literature 6,7 (about 13% of the total cord occupied by the GM at T6 vertebra, 41% at L1). For verification purposes, the different models that were used were defined similar to a previous experimental study.…”

“…Spinal cord geometry was taken from post-mortem histology data 7 and has been shown to be a good representation of in vivo geometry, even though post-mortem spinal cord dimensions may be slightly smaller. 6,7 Moreover, geometrical characteristics, such as spinal cord eccentricity in the spinal canal, nerve roots anchoring, arachnoid matter presence, and spinal cord anterior median fissure mechanical characteristics, should be considered when developing a spinal cord FEM. Also, the spinal cord anisotropic properties were not represented in this study.…”

“…The latter has been shown to vary along the spine, 6,7 and its influence on spinal cord contusion mechanisms has not been studied extensively. Yan et al 14 have developed an FE model with realistic three-dimensional (3D) variations in the spinal cord to study SCI following burst fracture.…”

“…The geometrical parameters of particular interest are the spinal canal cross-sectional area, the amount of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and the white matter (WM)/ gray matter (GM) proportion, since they are recognized to vary significantly along the spine. [6][7][8][9] Experimental studies have suggested that CSF plays an important role in spinal cord protection by reducing its deformation during impact, through its damping effects. 10 These findings have been confirmed by finite element (FE) studies, which have, in particular, allowed a description of internal stress and stress fields in the spinal cord during SCI.…”