• Sedat Dalbayrak, Onur Yaman, Mustafa Nevzat Firidin, Tevfik Yilmaz, and Mesut Yilmaz.
• Neurospinal Academy, Department of Neurosurgery, Istanbul, Turkey.
• Turk Neurosurg. 2015 Jan 1;25(1):36-42.

AimCervical spine is the most kinetic segment of the whole vertebrae. The radiologic imaging methods concern with the morphologic changes but give no functional data. At flexion, spinal cord strains, anterior osteophytic compression increases. At extension, spinal canal gets narrower, cord shortens and gets thicker, compression of posterior ligament gets abberant and cord compression increases.Material And Methods258 cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) cases were scanned by conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and additionally dynamic MRI. Contributions of dynamic cervical MRI to the surgical plans and results were evaluated.ResultsWe had sagittal and axial T2W MR scans at flexion and extension, in addition to the neutral cervical MR imaging. We found that the AP diameter of spinal canal is increased 14.9 % in flexion and decreased 13.4 % in extension relative to the neutral MR imaging.ConclusionThe changes of the cord compression and the transvers area of cord which is the most important prognostic indicator in spinal diseases and also the area of spinal cord and subarachnoid space can be detected via dynamic axial sections of MRI. Dynamic MR images may be helpfull in the decision making for the surgical treatment of CSM.

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