The Preliminary Clinical Application Study Of Diffusion-weighted MR Of The Spinal Cord In Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy

Object: To study the characteristics and the role of diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) in the clinical application of cervical spon-dylotic myelopathy(CSM).Materials and Methods: Cervical MRI and DWI were performed in 40 patients with cervical spondylotic myelopathy diagnosed by clinical and radiological findings, and 30 patients without clinical myelopathy. The features of DWI were analyzed and the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values were calculated . ROC curves were drawn by MedCalc software.Results: ADC values could be calculated in 68 patients(97%),but could not be calculated in 2 cases because of marked artifact. Among 38 CSM patients : 20 of them were accompanied with hyperintensity on T₂WI ; 30 were found with abnormal ADC values, 27 had increased ADC values,show as hypointensity or isointensity on DWI. In the ROC analyses,we found T₂-weighted images had a 52.6% sensitivity in the detection of myelopathy, however, we got a 81.6% sensitivity and a 80.0% specificity when used DWI togehter.Conclusion: Satisfactory DWI images and ADC value could be obtained using the single-shot echo-planar pulse sequence. DWI proved to be had a higher sensitivity and specificity in the diagnosis of CSM than conventional MRI. And according to the abnormal ADC value of spinal cord we can find its interior change earlier.