Quantitative assessment of longitudinal changes in intervertebral discs

Chronic low back pain is usually associated with degeneration of the intervertebral discs, although the disc itself may not be the source of pain. Unfortunately, there are no objective measures of the disc degeneration process. The gold standard relies on visual assessment of MRI scans, which may not capture complex physiological changes in degenerating discs. We used quantitative MRI metrics to study longitudinal changes disc degeneration over a period of 2 years. Although most subjects did not show visible changes in discs, there were significant losses in disc height and some discs also showed a reduction in ADC and T1ρ.