Department of Neurosurgery, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
Biophysics Graduate Program, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
J Cereb Blood Flow Metab. 2021 Aug;41(8):2010-2025. doi: 10.1177/0271678X20982396. Epub 2021 Jan 28.
Despite the potential to guide clinical management of spinal cord injury and disease, noninvasive methods of monitoring perfusion status of the spinal cord clinically remain an unmet need. In this study, we optimized pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) for the rodent cervical spinal cord and demonstrate its utility in identifying perfusion deficits in an acute contusion injury model. High-resolution perfusion sagittal images with reduced imaging artifacts were obtained with optimized background suppression and imaging readout. Following moderate contusion injury, perfusion was clearly and reliably decreased at the site of injury. Implementation of time-encoded pCASL confirmed injury site perfusion deficits with blood flow measurements corrected for variability in arterial transit times. The noninvasive protocol of pCASL in the spinal cord can be utilized in future applications to examine perfusion changes after therapeutic interventions in the rat and translation to patients may offer critical implications for patient management.
尽管有潜力指导脊髓损伤和疾病的临床管理，但临床上仍需要一种非侵入性的方法来监测脊髓的灌注状态。在这项研究中，我们对啮齿动物颈脊髓的伪连续动脉自旋标记（pCASL）进行了优化，并证明了其在识别急性挫伤模型中的灌注不足方面的应用。通过优化背景抑制和成像读出，获得了具有减少成像伪影的高分辨率灌注矢状图像。中度挫伤后，损伤部位的灌注明显且可靠地降低。实施时间编码 pCASL 可通过校正动脉传输时间变化的血流量测量来确认损伤部位的灌注不足。脊髓 pCASL 的无创方案可用于未来在大鼠中检查治疗干预后的灌注变化的应用，并且向患者的转化可能对患者管理具有重要意义。
