The Clinical Application Study Of Diffusion-weighted MR Imaging (DWI) In Acute Contusion Of Spinal Cord

Objective To study the clinical value of diffusion—weightedMR imaging (DWI) in acute contusion of spinal cord.Methods 26 cases with acute contusion of spinal cord wereexamined with routine MRI and SS-EPI-DWI, on a 1. 5-tesla MRsystem within 72h trauma.Results 26 cases examined by MRI and SS-EPI-DWI. 8patients are negative and 18 patients are positive in MRI, whichshowed local lesions with significant abnormality signals.Positivecases were classified into three categories depending on differentdegrees of tissue injury and characteristics of DWI: (1) Edema—type:13 cases presented DWI high signals with different degree in locallesions. (2)Mixed—type: three cases showed DWI heterogeneous highsignals due to hemorrhage and edema in lesions. (3) Hemorrhage—type: two cases showed DWI low signals, T₂WI heterogeneous highsignals and T₁WI low signals due toprominent hemorrhage. Therewere significant difference of ADC values between lesions and normalparts (t=-5.316, P＜0.01).Conclusion SS-EPI-DWI of the spinal cord provided satisfactoryimages and was a useful method for visualizing the injury cord in thesuperearly stage, helping determine integrity and compression degree of spinal cord and detecting hemorrhage.