HARDI dMRI Imaging Of Cervical Spinal Cord

Abstract

Our work established an automatic pipeline of cervical spinal cord high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) data. Our pipeline that projects the diffusion results into high-resolution anatomical space utilizes Spinal Cord Toolbox (SCT), FSL libraries, in-house developed scripts and TORQUE-based batch system for grid computational engines. As one of the first, we are investigating multiple-direction models for human in-vivo spinal cord HARDI dMRI data. The visually inspected preliminary results indicate that significant 2nd directions are observable as expected based on previously presented mainly animal models. Our work provides an essential clinical tool that will allow quantifying spinal cord and dorsal spinal roots alterations in various neurological diseases in vivo.