• A Ozanne, T Krings, D Facon, P Fillard, J L Dumas, H Alvarez, D Ducreux, and P Lasjaunias.
• Service de Neuroradiologie Diagnostique et Thérapeutique, Hôpital de Bicêtre, Le Kremlin-Bicêtre, Paris, France, and Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA. augustin.ozanne@bct.ap-hop-paris.fr
• AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 2007 Aug 1;28(7):1271-9.

Background And PurposeDiffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of the spinal cord in patients harboring spinal arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) was carried out to evaluate the feasibility of this new technique to determine the displacement of the spinal cord tracts and to correlate morphologic and functional DTI data (fractional anisotropy [FA] and apparent diffusion coefficient [ADC]) with the clinical symptoms.Materials And MethodsNine patients with spinal cord AVMs were investigated at 1.5T using a sagittal spin-echo single-shot echo-planar generalized autocalibrating partially parallel acquisition diffusion-weighted imaging sequence. ADC and FA maps were computed in different regions of interest (both above and below the nidus), and tractography was used to visualize the course of the tracts. The data were correlated with the clinical symptoms and compared with 12 healthy control subjects.ResultsAt the level of the nidus, tracts were normal, shifted, separated, or interrupted but not intermingled with the nidus. Interruption of the tracts was coherent with the clinical symptoms. In patients with severe neurologic deficits, FA values caudal to the nidus showed a reduced anisotropy consistent with loss of white matter tracts.ConclusionsWe demonstrate that AVMs may interrupt, displace, or separate the fiber tracts and that clinical symptoms may be reflected by the quantitative FA results and the morphologic loss of fibers distant to the lesion. DTI with fiber tracking offers a novel approach to image spinal cord AVMs and may open a window to understand the complex pathophysiology of these lesions.

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